WPR19LA220 · Piper PA 30
Piper PA 30 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while maneuvering
From Falcon Field (FFZ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA220
- 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 30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N10KC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
During an instructional flight practicing a single-engine approach and go-around, the flight instructor and student pilot noticed that the landing gear would not fully retract. In addition, the landing gear circuit breaker was in the open position. The flight instructor reset the circuit breaker and attempted to cycle the landing gear but was unsuccessful because the circuit breaker popped back to the open position on each cycle attempt. Attempts to manually extend the landing gear were unsuccessful. Subsequently, the flight instructor elected to land with the landing gear intentionally in the retracted position, resulting to substantial damage to the lower fuselage. Postaccident examination revealed that the nose gear was positioned to the far right turn position when the pilots attempted to retract the nose gear while practicing a single engine out landing and takeoff. Therefore, the centering mechanism was not able to center the nose gear, resulting in a jammed nose gear, which also likely tripped the circuit breaker.
Probable cause
The failure of the landing gear due to the nose gear being positioned to the far right during retraction, which caused the nose gear to jam upon retraction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA220
- Event ID
- 20190815X13220
- Case number
- WPR19LA220
- 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: a41e899c8cbf25ae5030e3a25999185d53e620fea871c3d51a196d3abeddc6bd; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:45:26.470Z.