ERA17LA301 · Piper PA28R 180
Pressley Aviation Piper PA28R 180 · Accident: hard landing
From Charlotte-Monroe Executive Airport (EQY) to Charlotte-Monroe Executive Airport (EQY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA301
- 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 PA28R 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N3805T
- Operator
- Pressley Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlotte-Monroe Executive Airport (EQY), Monroe, NCTo Charlotte-Monroe Executive Airport (EQY), Monroe, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1969)
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a preflight inspection of the airplane, the flight instructor and the student pilot observed a small hole in the upper surface of the left wing and skin wrinkling on the upper and lower surfaces of the left wing. The airplane had been flown twice on the previous day. The first flight, which was in the morning, was conducted by the same flight instructor and student pilot who noticed the damage. They reported that no damage was present when they performed a postflight inspection of the airplane. The second flight, which was in the afternoon, was conducted by another pilot as a personal flight. That pilot did not notice the damage during his preflight inspection. However, the damage was visible in photographs taken by a passenger on that flight, both on the ground before departure and during takeoff. Examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the left wing spar. The damage was consistent with a hard landing; however, the investigation could not determine when the damage occurred.
Probable cause
A hard landing at an unknown time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA301
- Event ID
- 20170828X35532
- Case number
- ERA17LA301
- 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: f4cc2d6746376057f3b668f00702ccb3c38de5e65206c3abd2068da3ef7e345a; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:46:05.906Z.