ANC03LA126 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: main gear collapsed during landing
From SKWENTNA, AK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03LA126
- 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 170A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N9006A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From SKWENTNA, AKTo not recorded
- 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 · 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
- 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 › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot was landing on a remote gravel area that was about 1,000 feet long, and 30 feet wide. The pilot said that during the landing roll, the airplane's right main landing gear suddenly collapsed. As the airplane slid on the gravel, the right gear strut was torn out of the fuselage, and the airplane received additional damage to the fuselage and right wing. After the accident, the pilot said he examined the right gear strut and discovered the right axle and wheel assembly were missing from the outboard end of the gear strut. After a search, the pilot located the wheel assembly and discovered that the nuts utilized to secure the attaching axle bolts to the gear strut, were stripped from their respective bolts. The pilot said he decided to wait until the next day before activating his airplane's emergency locator transmitter. He further said he decided to destroy his airplane by setting it on fire, as it would have been economically unfeasible to pay for repairs and helicopter transportation charges to remove the airplane from its remote location. The airplane was observed by search personnel as having burned.
Probable cause
An overload failure of the axle retaining nut/bolt assembly, which resulted in the separation of the axle/wheel assembly, and subsequent collapse of the right main landing gear strut during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03LA126
- Event ID
- 20031001X01640
- Case number
- ANC03LA126
- 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: 5a2c0fb27440a522a234d4c1538269d5873c3e6cff61ed9d5ae12e618cfc864a; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:27:49.831Z.