Small aircraft makes emergency landing at Terre Haute Regional Airport

The Return Looked Routine Until the Gear Was Tested

Piper PA-24-260 N73T departed on April 27, 2022, but the flight did not continue normally. Shortly after takeoff, the baggage door opened and the pilot decided to return to Terre Haute Regional Airport.

Accident Facts

During the downwind leg, the landing-gear circuit breaker tripped when the pilot attempted to extend the gear. The pilot reset the breaker and recycled the landing gear. The gear-down indication appeared, providing the cockpit indication expected for landing.

The airplane touched down, but the right main landing gear collapsed. The right wing sustained substantial damage. Both occupants were uninjured.

A Green Light Could Only Tell the Pilot So Much

The cockpit indication was not itself defective. The gear-down light reflected the commanded configuration, but it could not reveal whether every structural component in the landing-gear assembly would withstand the landing loads.

The NTSB examination found that the outer bearing brace had failed, allowing the landing-gear strut to separate from the trunnion. The fracture surface was consistent with overload. Investigators did not find corrosion or fatigue as the initiating mechanism.

The distinction is important: the landing gear had apparently reached the expected down position, but the structural assembly still failed when loaded. An indication can confirm system state without guaranteeing structural integrity under stress.

The Hard Landing Became the Causal Link

The NTSB concluded that the decisive event was a hard landing. The landing load was sufficient to produce the overload failure of the right main gear outer bearing, followed by the collapse of the gear.

That does not mean the earlier baggage-door problem or circuit-breaker trip caused the gear collapse. Those events explain why the aircraft returned and why the pilot paid particular attention to the landing gear. The investigation instead connected the actual structural failure to the landing loads.

The result was a good example of how an apparently controlled emergency can still end with significant aircraft damage. The occupants were safe, but the aircraft was not.

What the Records Show

The investigation did not require a theory of hidden corrosion, fatigue or a pre-existing catastrophic defect. The physical evidence supported an overload failure associated with the hard landing.

Evidence and Findings

The accident also shows why a pilot should not treat a green gear indication as a guarantee that the landing gear assembly is structurally sound. A cockpit indication tells the crew what the system is reporting; it cannot reveal every load-bearing component's condition.

• A gear-down indication does not guarantee that the landing gear will withstand landing loads.
• Circuit-breaker trips and abnormal gear indications should be treated as genuine configuration concerns.
• Structural failures can occur during landing even when the aircraft appears correctly configured.
• A non-injurious outcome does not mean the event was operationally insignificant.
• Returning early for an abnormality can still end in a demanding landing.

Sources

• Video source (ATC/audio reconstruction)