WPR26LA133 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: landing gear collapse during takeoff
From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO) to West Linn, OR
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA133
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N7632H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO), Hillsboro, ORTo West Linn, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 80 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On March 18, 2026, about 1700 Pacific daylight time, a Piper PA-12, N7632H, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near West Linn, Oregon. The pilot was not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight.
The flight departed Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO), Hillsboro, Oregon, about 1500, en route to an off-airport landing area on Goat Island, located in the Willamette River. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed, and no flight plan was filed.
The pilot reported that, during takeoff from an unimproved surface on Goat Island, the airplane accelerated normally. As the airplane reached rotation speed and became light on the landing gear, it made a sudden, sharp left turn. The airplane departed the takeoff area, traveled over the shoreline, and came to rest in the Willamette River, resulting in substantial damage to the right wing.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left main landing gear had separated. The forward attach point exhibited longitudinal tears, and the aft attach point displayed cracking and buckling of the rear gear leg.
The airplane was recovered to a secure location. The left main landing gear leg was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA133
- Event ID
- 20260324202683
- Case number
- WPR26LA133
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-03-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a84f76dc02fc84b7716289359533cf2eb01f9c97e5581df75691c1687653ff4e; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:01:44.981Z.