ERA18LA182 · Piper PA 25 Undesignat
Blackstone Aircraft Piper PA 25 Undesignat · Accident: landing gear collapse during takeoff
From Leon's Landing Airport (4AL7) to Leon's Landing Airport (4AL7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA182
- 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 25 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-25
- 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
- N6307Z
- Operator
- Blackstone Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leon's Landing Airport (4AL7), Flat Rock, ALTo Leon's Landing Airport (4AL7), Flat Rock, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 58 years (built 1960)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting an agricultural application flight. During the takeoff roll and before becoming fully airborne, the right main landing gear (MLG) “snapped,” followed by the right wing dropping and striking the runway. As the right wing and propeller dug into the turf, the airplane spun, departed the runway, and subsequently impacted hay bales before coming to rest. The fuselage and right wing were substantially damaged. Examination of the right steel spring MLG revealed that it had broken off cleanly at the wheel and displayed features that were indicative of a fatigue failure. No maintenance records were available for examination, and the service history of the right MLG could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the right landing gear during takeoff due to a fatigue failure, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA182
- Event ID
- 20180630X45135
- Case number
- ERA18LA182
- 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, cause areas. 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: a93e7a8cd2459a5d035dc4bcf6febdc5d50e151c7cda28c0b3e2bae9bed823bb; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:42:58.735Z.