CEN22LA225 · Piper PA-22-160
Piper PA-22-160 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA225
- 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-22-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N8926D
- Operator
- Hashley Gary L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineral Wells Regional Airport (MWL), Mineral Wells, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1958)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was conducting a local pattern flight and performing touch and goes when during his second landing when he applied the brakes to slow down, the brakes did not respond. The pilot used the emergency break handle to stop but got no response. The pilot then steered the airplane into the grass adjacent to the runway to slow down. During the excursion, the left main landing gear struck a hole in the grass causing the aircraft to stop abruptly and nose over coming to rest inverted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage and wings. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed a small hole in left brake line and the line in that area was chaffed. The line transitioned from the airplane fuselage to the landing gear and brakes through a jagged hole in a metal support bulkhead. The hole did not possess a barrier or material to prevent rubbing of the break line. A review of the airplane’s maintenance logs did not show any entries regarding the brakes or any damage to the left brake line area. It is likely that the hole in the brake line existed for some time before it leaked enough fluid to cause the brakes to malfunction during the accident flight. According to a manufacturer’s engineering diagram, there should have been a grommet installed (Part Number: AN331-6-10) in the bulkhead hole that the brake line passed through. The part was designed to protect the brake line from chaffing.
The pilot reported that there were no indications of a brake issue when he did his preflight.
Probable cause
Inadequate maintenance of the airplane’s brake system that resulted in a hole in the brake line, the loss of brake fluid, and the subsequent loss of brake functionality.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA225
- Event ID
- 20220606105187
- Case number
- CEN22LA225
- 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, coordinates, 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: a5d96fe367b9d35a21915a43720fd1505661737f844f1bb070cf95dd057bd615; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:17:18.137Z.