Recap tires, tires over inflated, low strut or over inflated
strut, tow bar still attached to nose wheel.

I actually had some first hand knowledge of that incident.
Pilot flew in late in the evening, line person had to get
special tow bar for the aircraft. Line boy left it on the
aircraft, to speed up the departure the next morning.
Pilot comes out at dawn, does a "thorough pre-flight" and
takes-off with the tow bar adapter still on the nose wheel
[Piper Arrow]. Aircraft was high time.
Nose wheel stuck 1/2 way up, Pilot flew around for a while
and then landed. Airframe damage was limited to nose and
firewall. In my mind the pilot was solely responsible since
that big chunk of red painted iron was visible.

But the FBO bought the pilot a new engine, prop, and all
other parts and installed them at no charge. I guess they
thought that a jury might not understand the phrase "pilot
in command."


"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
ps.com...
| On Feb 16, 9:06 pm, "Jim Macklin"
| wrote:
| Always better to land with the mains down or with them
up if
| wing and nose. But A proper pre-flight and maintenance
| reduces the issue to a rare case. But then lots of
people
| don't do the maintenance they should do.
|
| Its amazing how often such a stuck gear situation follows
immediately
| after maintenance or after a really hard landing.
|
| -Robert
|
|