SEA03LA001 · Curtiss-Wright Travel Air 4000
Tillamook Air Tours Curtiss-Wright Travel Air 4000 · Accident: main gear collapsed during landing
From S47 · Tillamook, OR to S47
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA001
- 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
Curtiss-Wright Travel Air 4000
- Aircraft type
- Curtiss Wright TRAVEL AIR 4000
- 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
- N4949
- Operator
- Tillamook Air Tours
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S47 · Tillamook, ORTo S47
- 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
- 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
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot preflighted the 1928 Curtiss Wright Travel Air 4000 and departed with two passengers on a short, local sightseeing flight. Upon landing the aircraft veered left off the runway nosing over and coming to rest inverted in the grass. Post crash examination revealed that the original weld between the left-right main wheel axle and the left wheel "V" strut had fractured allowing the left strut and wheel axel to separate and the left wheel to subsequently collapse/shift during the landing roll. Although company personnel on the ground observed the aircraft prior to landing and noted the left main gear "hanging down" they were unable to contact the pilot by radio and the pilot's view of the main wheels was obstructed in flight.
Probable cause
The fracture of the weld joining the left main wheel strut to the left/right main wheel axel resulting in separation of the strut from the axle during an unknown phase of operation which ultimately lead to the left gear collapse and subsequent nose-over on landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA001
- Event ID
- 20021021X05349
- Case number
- SEA03LA001
- 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: 215c44a61b63c98a00b4a21c9d45286ea0368c8f4174f90f1803a2a1ccadf0e5; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:09:13.110Z.