ERA12LA441 · Piper PA-46-350P
System Designs Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Booneville-Baldwyn Airport (8M1) to Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA441
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N4133G
- Operator
- System Designs
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Booneville-Baldwyn Airport (8M1), Booneville, MSTo Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO), Auburn, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 1998)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Landing gear collapse
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, as the nose landing gear contacted the runway during landing, he heard the tire squealing. The airplane veered right, the nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane departed the right side of the runway. Postaccident examination revealed that the engine mount had a circumferential fracture at the nose landing gear attachment foot and that the fracture exhibited features consistent with failure due to fatigue. A longitudinal fracture was also found extending from the circumferential fracture to the outboard end of the attachment foot. The surface of the fracture area displayed a matte black appearance, in contrast to the glossy black appearance of the adjoining support tubes. In addition, green primer, which displayed features consistent with brush strokes, could be seen through the coating in areas near the weld.
Before the accident, the manufacturer had issued a series of service bulletins (SB) that required recurring inspections for cracks in the engine mounts in the areas of the nose landing gear actuator attachment feet, the most recent of which was SB-1103D. These inspections required that paint be removed from and around the attachment feet and that corrosion prevention compound be applied after the inspection was completed. Although the nonuniform paint coverage and brush marks around the right attachment foot suggested that the paint might have been removed in accordance with the SB's inspection procedures, no corrosion prevention compound was observed on the accident airplane's engine mount, which indicates that full compliance with the SB had not occurred.
Review of the airplane's maintenance log entries revealed that none of the entries referred to compliance with any revision of the SB. The maintenance log entry for the most recent annual inspection, which was performed in July 2011, stated, "Note - SB1103D not performed this date at owner's request." If the airplane owner had maintenance personnel inspect the engine mount in accordance with the SB, the development and propagation of the fatigue cracking at the nose landing gear actuator attachment foot might have been detected and remedied before the accident.
Probable cause
The airplane owner’s failure to have maintenance personnel comply with an aircraft manufacturer's service bulletin to require engine mount inspections for fatigue cracks, which resulted in an undetected fatigue crack, the engine mount failing, and the nose landing gear collapsing during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA441
- Event ID
- 20120711X40806
- Case number
- ERA12LA441
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c946e9c737997a3e555bfd67fb18c56794fc85332556f75b8a60ad67f0e01695; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:51:38.443Z.