ERA20LA230 · Piper PA46 600TP
Piper PA46 600TP · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI) to Williston Municipal Airport (X60)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA230
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA46 600TP
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N117PR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI), Abilene, TXTo Williston Municipal Airport (X60), Williston, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2019)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot received his private pilot certificate about 2 ½ months before the accident. The pilot then transitioned to the accident airplane, receiving training from an instructor who had completed the factory-authorized training. At the time of the accident, the pilot had a total flight experience of 99 hours, of which 54 hours were in the accident airplane; however, the accident flight was the pilot’s first flight in the accident airplane without a flight instructor.
While landing at the airport after a cross-country flight, the airplane departed the right side of the runway onto a grassy area, and the nose landing gear collapsed. Immediately after the accident, the pilot reported to an off-duty law enforcement officer that a gust of wind “got him” and also reported to police officers that a “strong gust of wind” caused the airplane to veer off the runway. In his subsequent written statement, he stated that the nosewheel steering system was unresponsive and contained a manufacturing defect.
Although the pilot claimed that there was an issue with the nosewheel steering system, postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Flight control continuity was established for all flight controls, and nosewheel steering continuity was confirmed. The nose landing gear skid marks on the runway traveled left, then right before exiting the runway. The recorded wind at the airport about 7 minutes after the accident was a left quartering headwind at 11 knots. Given the pilot’s statements regarding the gust of wind, the postaccident examination, and the pilot’s limited experience in the accident airplane, it is likely that the pilot failed to control the airplane while landing in crosswind conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control while landing with a crosswind, which resulted in a runway excursion and nose landing gear collapse.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA230
- Event ID
- 20200615X33211
- Case number
- ERA20LA230
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: f8b0c8dde8932e9f60e1d4cf746b7748f641537e3e4cceba098cb24fa031ff97; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:51:22.975Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. ABI is Abilene Regional Airport in Abilene, TX; the recorded city name is misspelled.