GAA17CA416 · Piper PA 22
Piper PA 22 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Breckenridge, MI (private airstrip) to Breckenridge, MI (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA416
- 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 22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N9807D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Breckenridge, MI (private airstrip)To Breckenridge, MI (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1959)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was practicing short-field, touch-and-go landings on the private grass airstrip. The final leg of the approach was over a cornfield and a road perpendicular to the approach end of the airstrip.
During final, the main landing gear (MLG) struck corn stalks that were about 6-ft tall. The airplane then landed short and struck the road. The right MLG collapsed, and the airplane slid across the road and onto the grass airstrip. The airplane's nose dug into the grass and dirt, and the airplane nosed over.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right-wing strut and the rudder.
The pilot reported that "this accident was pilot error" and that he believed that he became "fixated on the beginning of the grass and was oblivious to the height of the corn."
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of situational awareness during the approach over a corn field, which resulted in collision with corn stalks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA416
- Event ID
- 20170719X12704
- Case number
- GAA17CA416
- 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: 86ab3c5413e438247276c09b3ead72ca57d19d8ef2483d3c3b80ebe24a5eebb9; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:33:26.770Z.