CEN13IA270 · Piaggio P180
Avantair Piaggio P180 · Incident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (KPIE) to St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (KPIE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13IA270
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- 0
- 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
Piaggio P180
- Aircraft type
- Piaggio P180
- 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
- N139SL
- Operator
- Avantair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (KPIE), Clearwater, FLTo St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (KPIE), Clearwater, 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
- 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
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing, the nosewheel touched down, and the pilot heard the tire "squeal" and then felt the airplane gradually veer right. The pilot attempted to correct the turn by applying left rudder, left braking, and left-engine reverse thrust. The airplane came to a stop with the nose pointed more than 90 degrees right of the runway centerline. Examination of the nose landing gear steering manifold revealed that it had recently been overhauled but that the overhaul was not conducted in accordance with the manufacturer's component maintenance manual (CMM); the overhaul facility used unapproved alternative tooling because it did not have the required tooling to conduct the overhaul as specified in the CMM. The nose landing gear steering manifold exhibited internal damage consistent with metal tooling marks that resulted from the use of improper tooling during the overhaul and led to the failure of the nose landing gear steering manifold during landing.
Probable cause
The failure of the nose landing gear steering manifold during landing, which resulted in an uncommanded and uncontrollable right turn, and the overhaul facility’s improper overhaul of the nose landing gear steering manifold.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13IA270
- Event ID
- 20130510X41006
- Case number
- CEN13IA270
- 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: a51262f38bec99933c1881f7e56aa2cdf7b794290b73c8b1ee5249c6531c366b; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:30:06.942Z.