SEA03LA192 · Cessna 421B
Cessna 421B · Accident: nose gear collapsed while taxiing
From Casper-Natrona County International Airport (CPR) to U59 · Driggs, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA192
- 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 421B
- 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
- N41053
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Casper-Natrona County International Airport (CPR), Casper, WYTo U59 · Driggs, ID
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Nose 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, nose gear assembly › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing and proceeding on the centerline, the pilot began to make a right turn following the taxi marker onto a taxiway. When the aircraft was off the runway, a brief and unusual nose wobble was detected. The nose of the aircraft then dropped to the runway and the propellers struck the pavement, causing the aircraft to come to an immediate stop. After separating from the aircraft, the nose wheel was observed approximately 3 to 5 feet from where it came to rest. It was observed that the wheel was smoking from the heat at the center bearing axle shaft, and there was a considerable amount of debris scattered near the front and rear of the aircraft. There was also debris from the nose wheel bearing housing found as far as 500 feet behind the aircraft. The nose landing gear structural attach points were substantially damaged. An FAA inspector reported the nose wheel bearing had failed and separated from the nose fork. The inspector also reported that the bearing and roller retainer on one side of the axle had disintegrated and was missing, while the bearing on the opposite side was void of any lubrication.
Probable cause
The collapse of the nose landing gear while taxiing due to the failure of the nose wheel bearing. A factor was the lack of lubrication.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA192
- Event ID
- 20030926X01603
- Case number
- SEA03LA192
- 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: 948d57ca9648c02154daa0aa33f85d349fc6c0451b6da02211816c45fc079cc7; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:29:37.250Z.