ERA18LA226 · Piper PA28 180
Piper PA28 180 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Griffin Spalding County Airport (6A2) to Thomaston Upson County Airport (OPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA226
- 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 PA28 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
- N8314W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Griffin Spalding County Airport (6A2), Griffin, GATo Thomaston Upson County Airport (OPN), Thomaston, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a preflight inspection with no anomalies noted before the cross-country flight. He made a full-stop landing at an airport before flying to the destination airport. He configured the airplane for final approach. The main landing gear touched down, but when the nose landing gear contacted the runway, the airplane veered left. The pilot attempted to counteract the turn by applying rudder; however, the airplane continued to the left side of the runway. The right wing tip touched the pavement, the propeller struck the runway, and the nose landing gear wheel separated as the airplane continued off the runway. The airplane came to rest about 75 ft off the left side of the runway in a grassy area. The rod that attached the nosewheel to the nosewheel assembly remained connected to the nose landing gear fork; however, the rod was bent, and one of the nuts that secured the nosewheel to the rod was missing. Further examination revealed that the rod was threaded on both ends; one end had a nut attached, while the other end had bare threads that had been deformed in a manner consistent with the nut having been pulled off the threads. The missing nut was not located on the runway. The airplane had landed over 250 times between the most recent annual inspection and the accident. The location of the missing nut could not be seen during the preflight inspection because the area is covered by the wheel fairing. It could not be determined when the nut was pulled from the axle rod.
Probable cause
A landing gear axle nut being pulled from the threads of the axle rod at an unknown time, which resulted in the pilot's inability to maintain directional control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA226
- Event ID
- 20180704X10947
- Case number
- ERA18LA226
- 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: b0e74e828e39a2fd07e3f19e07b50ac3d07f91319acb053c45c8a4328ebfab56; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:44:47.709Z.