CEN17LA150 · Piper PA 28R-201
Piper PA 28R-201 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to Oakland County International Airport (PTK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA150
- 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-201
- 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
- N36458
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While conducting touch-and-go landings and as the private pilot landed the airplane for the third time, the right main landing gear and nose landing gear collapsed, and the right wing was partially separated from the airplane.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that maintenance personnel had improperly secured an unused instrument lamp socket during recent maintenance, which allowed an electrical short of the landing gear controls. The landing gear control circuit breaker tripped, which stopped the landing gear from fully extending while it was transitioning to the down position. It also rendered the landing gear indicators and warnings inoperative so the pilot was unaware the landing gear was not fully extended.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s improper securing of an unused instrument lamp socket during recent maintenance, which resulted in an electrical short of the landing gear controls and stopped the landing gear while it was transitioning to the down position and led to the landing gear collapse.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA150
- Event ID
- 20170410X54254
- Case number
- CEN17LA150
- 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: 464887bfc7bfd1bd2d6c82a1ac5aa207ccc59eb9d9ca32169e485bd5f9ca3b12; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:09:18.653Z.