FTW97LA368 · Bellanca 7KCAB
Bellanca 7KCAB · Accident: main gear collapsed during landing
From Centennial Airport (APA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA368
- 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
Bellanca 7KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 7
- 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
- N88314
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA)To not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Landing gear, main gear strut › Failure
- Landing gear, main gear strut › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, a normal wheel landing was made. When the airplane touched down, the right main landing gear broke off and struck the leading edge and bottom surface of the right wing. The airplane slid off the right side of the runway and ground looped. Metallurgical examination of the fractured strut disclosed 'fatigue from multiple sites on the bottom surface in the bend radius outboard of (where it attaches to the fuselage).' There was 'no obvious mechanical damage/corrosion damage.' The left landing gear also exhibited 'cracks in the same area and on the inboard side of the clamp.' The landing gear was replaced on January 14, 1984, at a total service time of 1,390 hours. At the time of the accident, the airplane had accrued 3,624 hours, a difference of 2,234 hours.
Probable cause
failure of the right main landing gear due to multiple fatigue cracks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA368
- Event ID
- 20001208X08860
- Case number
- FTW97LA368
- 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: a68586aad2f32399c515bb95ec3ff1775084e823fd0bf3fec279cf294dfa5c61; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:35:56.509Z.