ERA15LA289 · Piper PA-28R-180
SkyEagle Aviation Academy Piper PA-28R-180 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while maneuvering
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA289
- 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-28R-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N4631J
- Operator
- SkyEagle Aviation Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and pilot-rated passenger were conducting an instructional flight. The flight instructor reported that, after conducting some airwork, he attempted to extend the landing gear as part of the prelanding checklist, but he did not receive a down-and-locked indication for the nose landing gear (NLG). He performed the emergency gear extension procedure twice, and, during the second attempt, the NLG moved to the down-and-locked position, but a left yaw was present, and the left rudder pedal had moved fully forward, which required an abnormal amount of right rudder input. The flight instructor performed a low pass over the runway, and company personnel informed him that the NLG appeared to be deflected left. He returned to the airport and performed a soft-field landing and secured the engine after touchdown. When the NLG contacted the runway, the airplane veered left off the runway and then came to rest upright.
Postaccident examination of the engine and NLG strut mount assembly revealed fatigue fractures on both sides of the mount near the NLG pivot, which prevented the proper alignment of the NLG after it was extended and the pilots from being able to maintain directional control of the airplane after landing. The complete maintenance records were not available; therefore, the time on the engine and NLG mount assembly could not be determined. Although the available maintenance records did reveal that the engine and NLG strut mount assembly had been inspected as part of the annual inspection performed about 15 hours before the accident flight, the location of the fatigue cracks and color of the mount assembly likely would have made detecting the preexisting cracks difficult.
Probable cause
The undetected fatigue cracks in the engine and nose landing gear (NLG) strut mount assembly, which prevented the proper alignment of the NLG after it was extended and the pilots from being able to maintain directional control after touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA289
- Event ID
- 20150729X01126
- Case number
- ERA15LA289
- 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: a65463b69d6c76db9f18c68d5e8af250d7db756f0c96a984fd3d73581e11a705; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:35:43.195Z.