ERA21LA153 · Piper PA-32RT-300
Piper PA-32RT-300 · Accident: hard landing
From Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (LYH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA153
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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-32RT-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N94GF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lynchburg Regional Airport - Preston Glenn Field (LYH), Lynchburg, VATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1978)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 stated that prior to landing he obtained the automated weather report from a nearby airport and continued to the destination where he overflew the airport and entered the traffic pattern for landing. He noted the direction of the windsocks and that they favored the selected runway, and he continued his approach. He turned onto the base and final legs of the airport traffic pattern, and while on final approach maintained 85 knots with the flaps fully extended and the landing gear down and locked. The pilot-rated passenger described the landing as, “harder than normal” while the pilot described it as being, “moderate to hard.” After brake application the airplane veered to the left, which the pilot attributed to be from a “soft” right brake. The airplane went off the left side of the runway and yawed 180° coming to rest upright. The pilot also stated that he thought the wind may have shifted to a tailwind on landing.
Postaccident examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector revealed that the outboard portion of the airplane’s right wing was substantially damaged during the accident. The left wing immediately above the left main landing gear was also damaged and displayed signatures consistent with the landing gear strut being forced upward through the wing skin. Additionally, the left main landing gear strut had separated from the trunnion fitting assembly. The strut showed deep scratches and gouges consistent with being driven upward through the wing’s skin after it separated from the trunnion. No evidence of pre-existing cracking or fractures was noted on the trunnion assembly. The FAA inspector also examined the airplane’s brakes and noted no resistance when actuating the pedals from the left seat. Despite this finding, it is most likely that the airplane’s left main landing gear was displaced from its normal orientation during the hard landing, which resulted in the runway excursion.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing, overstress fracture of components of the left main landing gear, and subsequent runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA153
- Event ID
- 20210312102749
- Case number
- ERA21LA153
- 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: 483aa1995b6c8d8fb0698919d1a19b6b18ec4b6f66d9e044daaac21a57fbd4be; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:48:51.519Z.