What happened
On July 19, 2013, a Robin DR400-180, registration F-GORD, was performing a general aviation flight from Lognes Emerainville to Le Touquet Paris Plage. During the landing phase on runway 14, the pilot encountered a crosswind of approximately 22 knots. While the aircraft remained stable on final approach, the pilot maintained a nose-up attitude to decelerate before gradually releasing the control column to allow the nose wheel to touch the ground.
Upon touchdown, the aircraft suddenly veered to the left. Despite the pilot's attempts to use the rudder and brakes to correct the trajectory, the aircraft exited the paved surface and traveled into the grass. The excursion ended when the aircraft struck a drainage ditch approximately 50 meters from the runway edge, resulting in heavy damage to the aircraft. There were no injuries to the pilot or the passenger.
The investigation
The BEA examined the aircraft's nose wheel mechanism and the pilot's flight controls. The investigation established that the DR400-180 is equipped with an automatic in-flight locking mechanism for the nose wheel. While the flight manual does not explicitly mandate specific procedures to ensure the nose wheel is unlocked during taxi or landing, instructors typically advise pilots to push the control column forward or apply brakes to compress the strut and trigger the release.
The pilot, who had approximately 180 total flight hours, admitted to forgetting this specific technique during the landing. Ground tests conducted by the BEA confirmed that the locking and unlocking mechanisms were functioning normally. Additionally, the investigators noted a similar incident involving the same aircraft two days prior, where a different pilot had also experienced a leftward excursion due to a failure to depress the nose wheel strut, though no mechanical anomaly was found during subsequent maintenance inspections.