Corporate Air Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: main gear collapsed during landing
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to HJH
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA016
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N860FE
- Operator
- Corporate Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HITo HJH
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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, total
- Landing gear, main gear strut › Fatigue
- Manufacturer › Material defect(inadequate quality of material)
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lahaina, HI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Following a normal approach and landing, the left wing of the fixed gear aircraft dropped and the aircraft skidded on its belly-mounted cargo pod. Despite the pilot's attempt to maintain directional control, the aircraft veered off the runway to the left and down an embankment. Investigation revealed that the left main landing gear strut, a tubular spring steel assembly, was broken approximately midway between the wheel assembly and the fuselage attachment. Laboratory metallurgical analysis revealed that the strut failed due to multiple fatigue cracks that originated from an extrusion lap on the inside diameter of the strut. The lap was formed during the manufacture of the tubing from which the strut is fabricated, and caused a structural discontinuity from which the fatigue cracks initiated.
Probable cause
Structural failure of the main landing gear strut due to metallurgical fatigue. The fatigue cracks originated at an internal structural flaw placed in the part during manufacture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA016
- Event ID
- 20001211X11294
- Case number
- LAX99LA016
- 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: 8836e4151c7062fc755e63acf74b71597ec4d51aa8165623ad9418c8156dda6f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:03:24.064Z.