WPR22LA040 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA040
- 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-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N5057S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX), Santa Maria, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an approach to the airport, the right main landing gear would not extend. The pilot cycled the landing gear and made several abrupt, high-G maneuvers to try and free the right main landing gear from its retracted position. Despite his actions, the right main landing gear would not extend. During the landing, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the aft fuselage and right wing. During the postaccident examination of the airplane, the right main landing gear wheel well exhibited mechanical damage consistent with contact from the threaded end of the right gear door rod-end bolt. The right main landing gear door rod-end bolt had about 4 additional threads than the bolt used on the left main landing gear. The bolt was removed, and its length was 1-4/25 inch, which was about 1/8 inch longer than the correctly installed bolt, which measured 1-1/32 inch. It is likely that during the accident flight, the right main landing gear could not fully extend due to the right gear door rod-end bolt positioning itself on the inside of the landing gear wheel well, preventing the landing gear from extending.
Probable cause
The installation of an improper right main landing gear door rod-end bolt, which resulted in the right main landing gear not extending during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA040
- Event ID
- 20211119104273
- Case number
- WPR22LA040
- 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: 44e81be5ab450c649cb984c3e3db922b6897dac25424cd163f3e73a5a4051cf6; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:46:00.010Z.