ERA18LA220 · Czech Sport Aircraft AS PIPER SPORT
Czech Sport Aircraft AS PIPER SPORT · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Witham Field (SUA) to Witham Field (SUA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA220
- 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
Czech Sport Aircraft AS PIPER SPORT
- Aircraft type
- Czech Sport PIPER SPORT
- 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
- N425AZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Witham Field (SUA), Stuart, FLTo Witham Field (SUA), Stuart, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2010)
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The sport pilot was conducting a personal flight in the special light sport airplane. During landing, the airplane touched down normally on the main landing gear. After 50 ft of ground roll, the nose landing gear touched down and collapsed; one propeller blade subsequently separated, and the airplane came to rest upright on the runway. Examination of the airplane revealed that the nose landing gear had separated at a location that the airplane maintenance manual (AMM) and a service bulletin (SB) indicate should be inspected for cracks. The separated fracture surfaces exhibited cracking and corrosion. Review of the SB revealed that due to the development of cracks, an inspection for cracks per the AMM should occur every 25 flight hours or 50 cycles, whatever occurs first. The AMM stated to use a flashlight and 10x magnifier to visually inspect the nose landing gear leg lower section and verify that there is no evidence of cracking in paint on or around the place of the weld between the tube and the bracket. The most recent documented nose landing gear inspection was about 2 years 5 months before the accident. Thus, it is likely that the nose landing gear was not adequately inspected and cracks and corrosion were therefore undetected, which led to the nose landing gear collapse during landing.
Probable cause
Inadequate maintenance inspection of the airplane's nose landing gear, which resulted in a nose landing gear collapse during landing due to cracking and corrosion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA220
- Event ID
- 20180816X60234
- Case number
- ERA18LA220
- 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: d7b1fd817ad27902a3371d69d43e61b9ee19c33a8b125e32e37c6a8c5e7b759b; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:06:24.893Z.