CEN23LA217 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Harbor Springs Airport (MGN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA217
- 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 PA-28-181
- 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
- N4376H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harbor Springs Airport (MGN), Harbor Springs, MITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1984)
- 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
- 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 flight instructor and student pilot had completed two touch and go landings. On takeoff after the second landing, they heard an unusual thumping sound or a bang. Due to the unusual noise, the flight instructor elected to perform a precautionary landing. During the approach for a precautionary landing, the airport manager observed that the left main landing gear wheel assembly was hanging from the landing gear strut by the brake line and advised the flight instructor via radio not to land. The flight instructor then diverted to another airport due to the availability of increased airport fire and rescue services. The airplane landed on the runway centerline with the partially separated left main landing gear assembly and sustained substantial damage to the left wing. Postaccident examination revealed the landing gear strut housing and clevises were fractured at the upper torque link connection. Metallurgical examination revealed the strut and clevises fractured from fatigue cracks that had initiated along the radius of the clevis arms within the inner machined surface. These cracks initiated at multiple casting solidification voids and silicon-rich phases. The cracks propagated through the clevis cross-sections until the remaining cross-sections fractured from overstress.
Probable cause
The failure of the left main landing gear strut and clevises due to fatigue cracks that initiated at multiple casting solidification voids.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA217
- Event ID
- 20230601192285
- Case number
- CEN23LA217
- 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: 3e8747937d3133930a45e227e5ff94c2900d2312588d0f52c3971964a48a85b4; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:40:31.302Z.