CEN12LA456 · Piper PA-46-310P
Ware Resources Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Nashville International Airport (KBNA) to Metropolis Municipal Airport (KM30)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA456
- 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-46-310P
- 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
- N43840
- Operator
- Ware Resources
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashville International Airport (KBNA), Nashville, TNTo Metropolis Municipal Airport (KM30), Metropolis, IL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 systems
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he lowered the landing gear and observed three green annunciator lights. Shortly after touching down, the nose gear collapsed. The airplane began drifting to the left and the right main gear collapsed, followed by the collapse of the left main gear. Postaccident examination revealed the landing gear handle was in the UP position. The pilot said he may have hit the handle inadvertently when the nose gear collapsed and he was thrown forward. The hydraulic reservoir was full and there was no sign of leakage. The main gears extended when the emergency extension handle was pulled. Proper travel of the landing gear handle was noted at the selector valve.
Probable cause
Landing gear collapse for reasons that could not be determined because testing could not replicate the problem.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA456
- Event ID
- 20120718X75839
- Case number
- CEN12LA456
- 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. 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: b4e564e1f34dc4976aa5dcf693e99e35e098bfa74c987108c983799b477825eb; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:57:42.763Z.