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CEN14LA006 · Piper PA-46-350P

9 Oct 2013 · Xenia, OH, United States

Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: runway excursion during landing

From Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO) to Greene County/Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport (I19)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN14LA006
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
N561C
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Auburn University Regional Airport (AUO), Auburn, ALTo Greene County/Lewis A. Jackson Regional Airport (I19), Xenia, OH
Aircraft age
About 11 years (built 2002)
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
Runway excursion
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

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot reported that when the nosewheel touched the runway during landing, the airplane began to pull quickly to the left. He applied right brake and pulled back on the yoke, but the airplane continued to veer off the left side of the runway. The airplane traveled about 500 feet before the nose gear collapsed back into the wheel well, and the airplane's nose and propeller impacted the ground.

The postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the engine mount in the area of the nose gear actuator feet was fractured. As a result of similar accidents, Piper Aircraft had previously issued a Mandatory Service Bulletin (SB) No. 1103D on February 2, 2011. The purpose of the 100-hour recurring inspection specified in SB 1103D was to determine if cracks had developed on the engine mount in the area of the nose gear actuator feet. The accident occurred about 81 hours of time in service after the SB 1103D was complied with. The postaccident examination of the engine mount revealed that the paint around the engine mount attach feet area was only partially removed and not as specified in the SB. A microscopic examination of the right foot of the engine mount revealed that there were fracture features indicative of fatigue progression in many areas. Although the paint removal was not as thorough as specified in the SB, the area where the fatigue fracture was located was in the area where the paint had been removed and should have been detectable during the inspection.

Probable cause

The nose landing gear failure as a result of a fatigue fracture of the engine mount nose gear actuator feet in an area detailed in a service bulletin. Contributing to the accident was maintenance personnel’s inadequate completion of the inspection specified in the service bulletin.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN14LA006
Event ID
20131009X65500
Case number
CEN14LA006
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: 857e97cddfb687336050a93cb175618248cb64839eb36379645b2fecd4c254a4; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:56:53.938Z.