ERA20CA103 · Piper PA28RT 201T
Piper PA28RT 201T · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC) to Page Field (FMY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA103
- 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 PA28RT 201T
- 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
- N8320H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Venice Municipal Airport (VNC), Venice, FLTo Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1980)
- 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
- 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
The pilot reported that, at the conclusion of an uneventful flight, he approached the runway for landing. During touchdown, the airplane veered right, the left main landing gear (MLG) collapsed, the left wing contacted the runway, and the airplane then came to rest. The left wing and fuselage sustained substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right MLG wheel assembly was free to rotate about the strut and that the torque link bolt securing the MLG torque link had fractured and was corroded. The landing gear and separated bolt were not examined further.
Probable cause
The fracture of the right main landing gear torque link bolt on landing, which resulted in the landing gear assembly rotating freely, the subsequent loss of directional control, and the landing gear collapsing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA103
- Event ID
- 20200203X70328
- Case number
- ERA20CA103
- 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: da07f37bf1f7c0bd3e3e42d334fea5f04b9d12888239058cb18d834a4bf7b62a; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:02:34.552Z.