Flight 113 · Douglas DC-9-51
Douglas DC-9-51 · Incident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to Lihue Airport (LIH)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96IA300
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Douglas DC-9-51
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N420EA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)To Lihue Airport (LIH), Lihue, HI
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Nose gear collapsed
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Hydraulic system, line › Not secured
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Honolulu, HI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The nose landing gear did not fully extend as the flight approached its destination. After confirming the unsafe gear position through an inspection window, the crew completed emergency checklist procedures and readied the passenger cabin for an emergency landing while returning to the departure airport. In the ensuing emergency landing the nose gear collapsed and the aircraft came to a stop on the runway on its nose. A partial cabin evacuation was completed via the tailcone slide before it was determined safe to exit the remaining passengers and crew through the forward cabin doors. Inspection revealed that an improperly secured flexible hydraulic hose had engaged the nose wheel downlock mechanism preventing it from locking over center. The flexible hose was installed temporarily to replace a leaking rigid line.
Probable cause
Improper installation of a flexible hydraulic hose by company maintenance personnel and inadequate inspection of the work by company inspectors which resulted in the loose hose becoming entangled in the nose gear linkage, preventing complete extension of the nose gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96IA300
- Event ID
- 20001208X06543
- Case number
- LAX96IA300
- 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: 05ab065fd2d9eeb07fdd6ad5f69b3f9601c5f7d15dbd3dbc9f367d3a9e568b04; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:47:46.003Z.