Continental Connection Beech 1900D incident
Beech 1900D · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02IA165
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Beech 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N81533
- Operator
- Continental Connection
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Tampa International Airport (TPA), Tampa, 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, improper
- Landing gear, main gear strut scissors › Failure
- Landing gear, main gear strut scissors › Fatigue
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, as the airplane decelerated to 40 knots during the landing rollout he felt a vibration in the airframe. As the airplane continued to slow down the airplane began to pull to the left. The flight crew stopped the airplane on the runway. During the post-flight examination of the airplane the pilot discovered that the left main landing gear had turned 90 degrees to the left. The examination also revealed a fatigue fracture in the left main landing gear socket assembly. Examination of the socket assembly fracture revealed two fatigue regions initiated from the lower corner lug base radii and along the left and right base radii with multiple origins. Both the lower lug corner radii were confirmed to show marks consistent with repair blending. According to the blend repair procedure the surface is to be blended to surface finish comparable to that produced by 250 grit sand paper. A comparison was made between the surface finish in the repair area, and the surface produce by 240 grit sand paper on the part, which is slightly coarser than the 250 grit required. The surface finish in the repair region was much rougher than that produced by 240 grit sand paper.
Probable cause
The improper service of the left main landing gear socket, resulting in fatigue failure of the left main landing gear socket assembly at the lower scissor attachment point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02IA165
- Event ID
- 20020909X01553
- Case number
- ATL02IA165
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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, damage. 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: 2c3f68e804a677b9ed4a1e41872e00f5b939ea1fdd8c22ea8bb6a2f63538554f; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:58:45.302Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N81533; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.