NetJets Cessna 750 incident
Cessna 750 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) to Jackson, WY
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04IA126
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 750
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 750
- 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
- N961QS
- Operator
- NetJets
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CATo Jackson, WY
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Landing gear, main gear › Failure
- Landing gear, main gear › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing roll, approximately 10-15 miles per hour, the right main landing gear failed and the airplane came to a stop onto a taxiway. Examination of the airplane revealed the right main landing gear trailing link and wheel assembly separated from the airplane, and a portion of the upper trailing link and axle assembly remained attached to the main trunnion. At the time of the incident, the landing gear assembly had 5,228.5 hours total time, and 3,358 total cycles since new. The trailing link and axle assembly was certified for 44,400 total cycles. Metallurgical examination of the right main landing gear trailing link revealed the failure occurred due to fatigue cracking initiated by an undetected manufacturing defect. The defect was from electrical arcing that produced physical craters on the interior surface of the trailing link and locally changed the microstructure. The craters and changed microstructure served as stress concentrators and would initiate fatigue cracks under the influence of cyclic stresses. Cadmium plating and primer paint covered the defects. The presence of cadmium plating established that the damage had occurred prior to or during the early stages of plating during manufacture.
Probable cause
the failure of the right main landing gear trailing link due to fatigue cracking initiated by an undetected manufacturing defect. A contributing factor was the improper plating process by unknown manufacture personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04IA126
- Event ID
- 20040831X01326
- Case number
- DEN04IA126
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 09cf861ac5eda7c5bb6c48b31707852a9374b54ba53f3ce853ea74c9a9596a80; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:18:37.565Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N961QS; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.