MIA02LA089 · Cessna 421C
Cessna 421C · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Tampa Executive Airport (VDF) to Plant City Municipal Airport (PCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA089
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 421C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N237SM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tampa Executive Airport (VDF), Tampa, FLTo Plant City Municipal Airport (PCM), Plant City, FL
- 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 · aborted
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Fatigue
- Landing gear, main gear › Fractured
- Manufacturer › Material defect
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot's statement, after a landing and upon touchdown, he said he "…observed an abnormal touchdown...and knew there was a mechanical problem." He aborted the landing, cycled the gear twice, and noted the gear unsafe light had remained illuminated. He then returned to the departure airport, for further assessment of the landing gear situation by the tower personnel. The tower personal confirmed there was damage to the left main gear, He then proceeded to burn off about 1 1/2 hours of fuel before attempting a landing. The pilot landed on the grass next to the paved runway, touching down on the nose and right main landing gears. Examination of the landing gear revealed that the upper barrel (p/n 5141002-11) fractured as result of fatigue cracking, above a brazed-on collar, as a result of improper machining after the barrel was assembled during the manufacturing process.
Probable cause
the fracture of the landing gear upper barrel due to fatigue cracking, caused by improper machining after the barrel was assembled during the manufacturing process, resulting in damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA089
- Event ID
- 20020429X00586
- Case number
- MIA02LA089
- 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, coordinates. 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: 541c1ac42491dee52ad44bbac1ac800a89bd76f18ffa7b310d8c698f014dfc43; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:59:01.113Z.