ERA16LA121 · Piper PA46 350P
Valaqsur Piper PA46 350P · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) to St Simons Island Airport (SSI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA121
- 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
- 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
Piper PA46 350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N1982F
- Operator
- Valaqsur
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH), Marathon, FLTo St Simons Island Airport (SSI), Brunswick, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2012)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, after a normal landing on the main landing gear in gusty quartering headwind conditions, the nose gear touched down and he heard a "pop," then he "started losing control of the airplane." The nose continued to drop past the normal landing attitude while the pilot applied back pressure to the yoke and focused his attention on stopping the airplane and maintaining directional control. The pilot added that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane.
Examination of the nose landing gear revealed that the actuator was extended 6.8 inches, consistent with the nose gear being down and locked. This area of the nose gear assembly displayed gouging and missing material consistent with ground impact. The nose landing gear assembly was attached on the left side; however, the bolt was bent and the right side mounting point was fractured and separated from its attachment point, displaying fracture features consistent with overstress failure, which was likely the result of a hard landing.
Probable cause
A hard landing, which resulted in the collapse of the nose gear assembly due to an overstress fracture and separation of the right side mounting point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA121
- Event ID
- 20160302X25319
- Case number
- ERA16LA121
- 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: c94e9ee6bf738fb8283b27bb7c70f59b2bd53ac3e3dde8a074e6f775e8dafcdb; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:11:52.677Z.