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MIA04LA036 · Cessna 310P

21 Dec 2003 · Crystal River, FL, United States

Cessna 310P · Accident: gear collapsed during landing

From Crystal River Airport (CGC) to Cape Gloucester Airport (CGC)

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Event

NTSB case
MIA04LA036
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 310P

Aircraft type
Cessna 310
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
N5811M
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Crystal River Airport (CGC), Crystal River, FLTo Cape Gloucester Airport (CGC)
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
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

  • Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, inadequate

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 stated that during takeoff/initial climb, at an altitude of about 500 feet, he placed the landing gear handle in the "UP" position, and during retraction, heard a loud bang, and the rudder pedals shuttered. He said he lowered the gear handle, and received a green light indication only the main gear. He then retarded the throttle levers to check for the landing gear warning horn, but the horn did not activate. He said he then performed the emergency gear extension procedure, but the nose gear did not extend. During subsequent landing rollout, as the airspeed decreased the nose gear collapsed, and the airplane skidded to a halt on the runway. Examination of the airplane's maintenance records showed that maintenance had been performed on the airplane's nose gear 11 hours prior to the accident, and 5 hours prior to the accident the airplane had received an annual inspection. Postaccident examination of the airplane's nose landing gear revealed that the damage was consistent with the nose gear strut not receiving proper service, having deflated, and being out of alignment.

Probable cause

Inadequate maintenance by company maintenance personnel, which resulted in operation of the airplane with a deflated nose landing gear strut, which resulted in the nose gear failing to lock in position, gear collapse, and damage to the airplane during landing rollout.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record MIA04LA036
Event ID
20031231X02107
Case number
MIA04LA036
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: 9be9d131c12397b554ead4eea8682820ec6cea4ca521d1921ff233bf442cf464; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:03:51.423Z.