ERA12LA494 · Piper PA-44-180
Space Coast Aviation Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From Merritt Island Airport (COI) to Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA494
- 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-44-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N740FT
- Operator
- Space Coast Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merritt Island Airport (COI), Merritt Island, FLTo Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, FL
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was conducting practice instrument landing system approaches during an instructional flight when he observed that the nose landing gear indicator light did not indicate down and locked. He observed that the nose gear was extended and he cycled the landing gear without any changes to the nose gear indicator light. During a subsequent landing attempt, the airplane initially touched down on the main landing gear; however, as the nose landing gear touched down, it began to collapse. The airplane came to rest about 2,500 feet from the approach end of the runway, and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage around the nose gear. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the nose landing gear eccentric bushing, which engaged the downlock hook, was out of adjustment. In addition, a check of the hydraulic system fluid reservoir dipstick revealed that the fluid level was below the amount that could be observed on the dipstick. After the hydraulic system fluid reservoir was properly serviced and the eccentric bushing adjusted, the landing gear functioned normally. The airplane had been operated for about 10 hours since its most recent 100-hour inspection, which was performed about 12 days earlier. The accident flight was the airplane's first flight after it was released from maintenance, which included a landing gear inspection and operational check.
Probable cause
Inadequate maintenance servicing and inspection of the nose landing gear, which resulted in the failure of the nose landing gear to lock and its subsequent collapse during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA494
- Event ID
- 20120802X03951
- Case number
- ERA12LA494
- 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: d4a037054ad0a921259af9d6de49404b511870b13f4430dd8857a5d2e17a136a; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:10:01.676Z.