CHI04LA155 · Mitsubishi MU-2B-40
Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 · Accident: hard landing
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to Waukegan National Airport (UGN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA155
- 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
Mitsubishi MU-2B-40
- Aircraft type
- Mitsubishi MU-2
- 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
- N77DK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo Waukegan National Airport (UGN), Waukegan, IL
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was substantially damaged during a hard landing, which subsequently collapsed the nose landing gear and wrinkled the fuselage. The pilot stated that the approach was "fairly" stabilized, however, he noted he was late getting set-up for landing. He did not recall how many green landing gear extension lights he observed prior to landing. The pilot reported that when the main landing gear touched down on landing the nose of the aircraft "immediately dropped to the runway." He reported that the aircraft came to rest headed straight down the runway, approximately on the centerline. The post-accident examination determined that the nose landing gear was in a retracted position in the wheel well. The remaining sections of the nose landing gear doors were wedged behind the landing gear strut. The lower, outboard section of the fuselage was wrinkled from the nose landing gear to a point approximately even with the windshield. The aircraft manufacturer stated that the nose landing gear doors are mechanically actuated.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of the landing flare which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing factors were the subsequent overload and collapse of the nose landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA155
- Event ID
- 20040707X00921
- Case number
- CHI04LA155
- 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: c25711481c4fb77ce85a906e7d2dc160f389d644e04b622322dd575395a7a439; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:19:43.478Z.