WPR14LA051 · Piper PA 31P UNDESIGNAT
Flying Bull Aviation Piper PA 31P UNDESIGNAT · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to Calexico International Airport (CXL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA051
- 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 31P UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N14TG
- Operator
- Flying Bull Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), El Cajon, CATo Calexico International Airport (CXL), Calexico, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1974)
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he set up for a straight-in approach to the runway, that the approach was normal, and that he completed the prelanding checklist. He was targeting 90 knots indicated airspeed (KIAS) for touchdown, but the airplane was "slightly fast" as it was approaching the runway, so he pulled the power back to idle and initiated the landing flare. The airplane was unresponsive when he pulled up the nose. Although the airplane settled down on the main landing gear first, the nosewheel then contacted the surface and abruptly sheared off, the nose landing gear assembly separated from the airplane, and the airplane then nosed down and slid about 1,000 feet down the runway before coming to rest.
Postaccident examination of the nose landing gear strut assembly found that the housing was ruptured and that the strut had separated. Further examination of the assembly found no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that there were known problems controlling the airplane's nose attitude when the airplane was in the landing configuration between 90 KIAS and the recommended landing speed of about 80 KIAS. He stated that, although both these speeds are above the stall speed, they are too slow for the airplane to respond to pilot elevator control inputs. It is likely that the pilot did not maintain the appropriate pitch attitude for landing and that the nose landing gear contacted the surface hard, which broke the gear strut.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain the proper pitch attitude during the landing, which resulted in the nose landing gear contacting the surface hard and then separating from the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA051
- Event ID
- 20131114X31956
- Case number
- WPR14LA051
- 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: f605f3134c2e7d89fb23311267f7729289bdf6804723173c8b15399a8bc8ce2c; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:06:38.982Z.