PA-44 Seminole/Turbo Seminole
Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Flight Instructor; Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Multiengine
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 127; Flight Crew Total 1465; Flight Crew Type 163
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Maintenance; Ground Event / Encounter Ground Strike - Aircraft
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed; General Maintenance Action
Aircraft; Procedure
On [Date]; Aircraft X suffered from a hard landing; which resulted in nose wheel locking issue. The airplane went into Maintenance and got out that same day ([Date]).On [Date1] [two days later]; the next flight took place; as part of student's MEL (Multi-Engine Land) add-on training. That was the first flight since the airplane left Maintenance. When we put the master switch on; we had indications of a nose wheel issue. We restart the master switch; and the indications disappear. I decided to takeoff - knowing that the Maintenance checked on this problem and verified the plane was safe to fly. We had a normal takeoff; normal flight where we practice maneuvers; and then we came back to practice traffic patterns. We had a normal landing. We taxied back to the runway - and didn't have any indications for landing gear issue.We took off again; had to do 1 go around due to traffic on the runway; and came back for 1 last landing. We had the gear down on midfield downwind; with all the indications showing that the gear is down and lock. I personally verified that indication - on downwind; base and final as I always do. We did a short field landing to the 1;000 ft. mark. We had a normal approach and landing. Main wheels touched first; and the moment the nosewheel touched the ground; it collapsed. I took the controls immediately; shutting the engines off; announced on the CTAF; and evacuate the airplane after securing it.
I was practicing a mock check ride with my CFI on [Date]; we started from ZZZ around XA:10 and flew to [the practice] area which is southwest of ZZZ1 to practice some maneuvers; we came back around XB:00 after a short flight to practice a couple of landings; the landing was incident free. We taxied back and took off for the second pattern work; the whole pattern looked wonderful; on short final we saw a aircraft just landed and still on runway so my CFI instructed me to go around which I did at once; during my second attempt to land; I engaged the landing gear mid-field and I even told my CFI three green; no red and one on mirror; my downwind; base and final approach went perfect; on short final I reduced my speed to 75 kts. for a short filed landing and aimed for the 1000 ft. marker; I idled both the engines before 200 ft. to the 1000 ft. marker and the aircraft came to a slow touchdown; I touched down with the main gears first and kept the nose gear up for another 50 ft. to further slow down. When I dropped the nose gear the nose sinked down and touched down the runway; the nose landing gear did not show any resistance; my CFI took control at this point and kept the aircraft on the runway as it was drifting right; he then made the announcement on the CTAF to close the runway before shutting off the master switchI had earlier flown this same aircraft [two days prior] with another Instructor; that is when we came to know that this aircraft suffered a hard landing that morning and it set the unsafe landing gear alert; the Mechanic did stop by and did some minor repairs before our flight and cleared us for that flight but requested us to bring the aircraft back to hangar after we are done; which we did.I see from the log book that between both my flights no other pilot flew this aircraft.
Flight Instructor and Student flying a PA-44 aircraft reported the nose landing gear collapsed during landing. On a previous flight; the aircraft had suffered a hard landing and a mechanic had made minor repairs and then released the aircraft.