SEA06CA048 · Cessna A185E
Cessna A185E · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS) to Lewiston, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06CA048
- 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 A185E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N2303Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lewiston Nez Perce County Airport (LWS), Lewiston, IDTo Lewiston, ID
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Landing gear, main gear attachment › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, upon touchdown, the left landing gear leg "started to fail" as the airplane's weight came onto the wheels. The left gear folded outward, and the airplane veered to the left. The airplane's left wing tip contacted an embankment, and the airplane came to a stop. Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector revealed that there was structural damage to the left gear box, left wing strut, left wing tip, left aileron, the rear spar of the left wing, and the propeller. The inspector found that the 7/16-inch AN bolt that held the left gear leg to the fuselage failed in shear loading. Failure of the bolt allowed the gear to pivot on the landing gear box leading to failure of the lower landing gear box web.
Probable cause
The failure of the left main landing gear attaching bolt, which resulted in the left main gear collapsing during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06CA048
- Event ID
- 20060227X00239
- Case number
- SEA06CA048
- 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: 4b0348fabe8f38e33a4544ec50825b8c3ab06dfeffe7097ee7e72279d5a77ca3; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:08:05.072Z.