LAX97LA277 · Cessna 310
Cessna 310 · Accident: gear collapsed during landing
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to FFZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA277
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Cessna 310
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N8139M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo FFZ
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 collapsed
- 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 › Overload
- Other maintenance personnel › Instructions, written/verbal, not followed
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After a 3 hr training flight, the pilot put the gear selector down & obtained a green light indication. During main gear touchdown, the gear warning horn sounded, & the pilot performed a successful go-around. Subsequent attempts (using both the normal & emergency procedures to obtain a green down light for the landing gear) were unsuccessful. The right main landing gear collapsed during the final landing. Postaccident exam of the aircraft revealed that the right main gear upper side link had fractured, separating it from the lower side link. The associated push-pull tube for the upper side link was bent, and the attaching bolt was sheared. Metallurgical exam of the parts disclosed that all fractures & bends were the result of overload. This aircraft had sustained damage, while parked at another airport ramp. This occurred as a Boeing 727 was departing the ramp. Its jet blast lifted the Cessna off the ground, then it was abruptly deposited back on the ramp. Following the incident, the aircraft was ferried to a repair facility. Records of the repair showed that the gear work was limited to jacking the aircraft & inspecting the nose gear assembly, actuator and bellcrank, and nose structure. A gear retraction and extension check was also performed. The manufacturer stated that following the jet blast incident, the airplane should have undergone an extensive re-rigging of the gear to thoroughly inspect the system.
Probable cause
inadequate maintenance inspection of the landing gear system, following a prior incident, due to the mechanic's failure to follow the service manual instructions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA277
- Event ID
- 20001208X08670
- Case number
- LAX97LA277
- 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: 37eae3884c5fc51506d6e224b076edb3c1e48f0a56c7f90683d8b380f9c02f1c; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:52:01.128Z.