Mesa Airlines Flight 7591
Beech 1900D · Accident: gear retraction on ground during landing
From Gunnison Crested Butte Regional Airport (GUC) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA198
- 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
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Beech 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N154ZV
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gunnison Crested Butte Regional Airport (GUC), Gunnison, COTo Denver International Airport (DEN)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Landing · aborted
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Gear retraction on ground
- 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
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Failure, total
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the right main landing gear failed to retract. After review of procedures, the pilots elected to continue to their destination. On arrival, when the landing gear was selected to the down position, all landing gear indicated down and locked and the right main was visually verified by the captain. During landing roll, when passing through approximately 60 knots, the right main landing gear indication gave an intermittent unsafe indication. The pilot flying added power to go-around and the right main landing gear collapsed. The aircraft rolled/slid to a stop on the runway and an uneventful evacuation was conducted. Examination of the right main landing gear assembly provided evidence that the extension/retraction actuator had failed at the spherical bearing. Metallurgical examination found the spherical bearing had failed in fatigue and evidenced by wear and binding in certain positions. It was dry and there was no evidence of lubrication. A review of maintenance procedures and records for the aircraft revealed that all maintenance and inspections had been performed in accordance with applicable directives.
Probable cause
fatigue failure of the right main landing gear hydraulic actuator rod at the spherical bearing due to a lack of lubrication.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA198
- Event ID
- 20001208X05744
- Case number
- FTW96FA198
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5f833ad17dc3704ccc19213fba15ee616f8eccf66245da3fc7895862447d8d8d; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:51:37.179Z.