SEA07LA002 · Cessna 340A
Cessna 340A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Glacier Park International Airport (GPI) to Glacier Park International Airport (GPI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA002
- 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 340A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N1920E
- Operator
- James D. Roth · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glacier Park International Airport (GPI), Kalispell, MTTo Glacier Park International Airport (GPI), Kalispell, MT
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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, normal retraction/extension assembly › Binding(mechanical)
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While extending the landing gear the pilot heard a "loud bang" in the nose of the airplane. With both main landing gear having extended normally and the nose gear failing to extend, the pilot carried out the emergency landing gear checklist, but was unable to get the nose gear to extend. Air traffic control tower personnel subsequently confimred that the nose landing gear had not extended after the pilot did two flybys. The pilot then landed the airplane on both main landing gear, letting the aircraft settle onto its nose as airspeed bleed off, and it came to rest approximately 2,000 feet down the runway. A post-accident examination revealed that the adjusting bellcrank was fractured at the upper end where the fork bolt is normally inserted. The fracture features were consistent with overstress, and there was no evidence of any preexisting damage. The deformation and fractures appeared consistent with the bellcrank rotating relative to a stationary fork bolt during nose gear extension, such as could occur as a result of some obstruction or binding in the linkage forward of the bellcrank. The nature and cause of the binding in the linkages could not be determined.
Probable cause
The fracture of the adjusting bellcrank in overstress due to binding in a linkage forward of the bell crank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA002
- Event ID
- 20061010X01494
- Case number
- SEA07LA002
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-10-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f791b6ac0119bbd0b48fe13ba9480ef9f01b1af801d36329d1bd8ed3cbb9da75; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:22:41.726Z.