CHI97IA031 · ATR 42
ATR 42 · Incident: main gear collapsed while taxiing
From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97IA031
- 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
ATR 42
- Aircraft type
- ATR 42
- 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
- N47AE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)To Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, IL
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Main 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
- Landing gear, main gear › Corroded
- Landing gear, main gear › Fatigue
- Other maintenance personnel › Improper use of procedure
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While taxiing for takeoff, the right main landing gear collapsed. Examination of the landing gear revealed that the barrel lugs (used to attach the swinging lever to the main landing gear barrel) had failed. The fracture of the outboard lower lug exhibited a fatigue crack emanating from corrosion pits in the bore of the lug. The bushings for the lower lugs (replaced during overhaul) did not have the proper interference fit. During overhaul, the bushings did not have the proper applications of corrosion preventatives applied to the surface of the bushings as specified by the manufacturer's procedures. During the course of the investigation, nine landing gears with various numbers of total cycles since overhaul or manufacture were inspected. The inspections revealed torn or missing rubber sealant used on bushing flanges, corrosion in the lug bores, and corrosion on the lug faces.
Probable cause
improper use of procedures by maintenance personnel at an overhaul facility during overhaul of the landing gear, allowing corrosion to occur on the barrel lugs of the landing gear, which subsequently led to fatigue cracking of the lugs and eventual collapse of the gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97IA031
- Event ID
- 20001208X07002
- Case number
- CHI97IA031
- 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: 0f52e47defb8d85b2c543bc07266fe280d8209c15b1d3b50cc8bc3ba50b573b6; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:45:10.917Z.