MIA05LA062 · Howard Aircraft DGA-15
Howard Aircraft DGA-15 · Accident: main gear collapsed during landing
From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA05LA062
- 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
Howard Aircraft DGA-15
- Aircraft type
- Howard DGA-15
- 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
- N68431
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spruce Creek Airport (7FL6), Daytona Beach, FLTo 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, 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 this was going to be the third landing of the day. The landing was made to the southwest runway 23, which is a published 4000 ft long, by 176 ft wide. During the landing, the touchdown was "normal", with a slight skip. On the landing roll the airplane traveled down the runway for about 25 to 30 feet, and he felt the left side drop "slightly", and without warning the airplane veered to the right. He applied full left rudder and left brake several times to compensate for the right veer. The airplane continued to the right, and the right main landing gear went off the side of the runway. The airplane's heading changed 40 degrees to the right, as the airplane's left main landing gear collapsed and went under the fuselage causing the left wing to strike the ground. The left wing and the left underside of the forward fuselage incurred damage as the airplane departed the runway. The airplane came to a stop partially off and perpendicular to the runway. The FAA inspector who responded to the accident stated that both brake calipers were dry with no evidence of leaking fluid. The right wheel turned freely and the left wheel turned freely when the wheel pant was bent away from the left wheel. Both brake calipers moved freely in the slider pin bushings. The inside of the airplane's left main landing gear strut was inspected and internal rust and deterioration was found in the lower portion of the landing gear strut steel tube where it had broken. The pilot stated later, that an inspection of the left main landing strut revealed a substantial amount of rust inside the lower portion of the left main strut. The drag strut separated at the drain hole of the landing gear strut where it attaches to the left main landing gear oleo, consistent with the drain hole being obstructed for a period of time.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel failure to detect corrosion in the landing gear strut, resulting in the gear collapsing during landing and damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA05LA062
- Event ID
- 20050302X00249
- Case number
- MIA05LA062
- 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: 9837e43a0f68c7f1e42cfe1cba235b4dc4dc5e273b8477b8314efe6eef6da2f1; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:15:31.052Z.