LAX98LA074 · Cessna 195
Cessna 195 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV) to Long Beach International Airport (LGB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA074
- 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 195
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 195
- 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
- N4498C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porterville Municipal Airport (PTV), Porterville, CATo Long Beach International Airport (LGB)
- 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 · 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he landed on runway 30 and suddenly felt a 'bump.' The pilot further reported that at that time the aircraft began an uncommanded yaw to the left and he noted that the right main landing gear had separated from the aircraft. The aircraft came to rest on its side. An immediate inspection of the accident site yielded no sign of debris or potholes on the runway surface. An on-site examination of the aircraft found that the bolt which attached the landing gear spring to the fuselage had been bent, fractured, and distorted at an approximate 45-degree angle, and the support assembly had also been fractured. The bolt and a portion of the separated support assembly from the right main landing gear were sent to the Safety Board Materials Laboratory for testing. Details of the examination showed that the fracture surface on the bolt revealed no evidence of progressive cracking or preexisting defects. All fracture features and deformation on the bolt pieces were consistent with an overstress under bending/tension loading conditions. Examination of the bracket for the support assembly was conducted with the aid of a binocular microscope and disclosed the fracture features typical of a direct shear overstress separation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing, which led to a ground loop and a resultant overload failure of the right main landing gear attach points.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA074
- Event ID
- 20001211X09465
- Case number
- LAX98LA074
- 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: c2d901a4291320a3ae59eee3079b8b4edb57fd0a879b333428e3781b2e72064e; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:06:14.932Z.