ERA19LA030 · Piper PA28 161
Piper PA28 161 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during landing
From Bradley International Airport (BDL) to Simsbury Airport (4B9)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA030
- 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 161
- 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
- N8132X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bradley International Airport (BDL), Windsor Locks, CTTo Simsbury Airport (4B9), Simsbury, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was practicing approaches and touch-and-go landings. The pilot reported that, during taxi for takeoff, the wheel brakes were "sluggish"; when he was attempting a full-stop landing at the destination airport, the brakes "failed." The pilot steered the airplane off the runway to avoid a fence and collided with a ditch, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left main landing gear separated from the airplane during the ground collision, and there was evidence of pre-existing hydraulic fluid leakage where the fluid line fitting connected to the wheel brake assembly. Additionally, the right main landing gear wheel brake assembly was not attached to the trunnion by the required AN bolts, and the hydraulic fluid line fitting was not attached to the brake assembly. According to the maintenance logbooks, a 100-hour inspection was completed 18 days before the accident. The logbook entry noted servicing of all tires, wheels, brakes, and brake fluid. Given that the right main landing gear hydraulic fluid line was detached from its respective brake assembly, it is likely that maintenance personnel did not adequately inspect the wheel brake system, and the right brake failed due to a loss of hydraulic fluid.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel's inadequate inspection of the wheel brake system during the airplane's most recent 100-hour inspection, which resulted in a loss of hydraulic fluid and the pilot's inability to control the airplane during the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA030
- Event ID
- 20181028X02552
- Case number
- ERA19LA030
- 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: 3b39b2f77305fb70786d25087501461094762f6d82399f8dbe243fb6601860b3; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:23:23.060Z.