NYC07CA057 · Foley James Searey
Foley James Searey · Accident: gear collapsed during landing
From Waterbury Airport (N41) to Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07CA057
- 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
Foley James Searey
- Aircraft type
- Foley James SEAREY
- 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
- N477EM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waterbury Airport (N41), Waterbury, CTTo Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CT
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Landing gear › Previous damage
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a pre-buy and annual condition inspection of an amateur built Searey, the mechanic advised the pilot that the airplane's landing gear was out of adjustment. According to the airplane's maintenance records, the mechanic removed two bolts from the gear retraction drag links that were "to short," and replaced them with longer ones. He also found that the bolts were hitting the over center links and "repositioned the washers for more clearance." He then performed a retraction and extension test of the landing gear. Two landings later, the left main gear collapsed. The airplane slid off the side of the runway, struck a taxiway sign and was substantially damaged. During a postaccident examination by the airplane kit manufacturer, it was discovered that the "lock arms" were carrying the landing gear loads instead of the flat portion of the "angle" assembly, which normally rested against a wear pad. Further examination revealed that, sometime prior to the accident the bulkhead upright tubes had been bent outwards and the forked end of the hydraulic ram was out of adjustment and could not fully retract, keeping the knee joint from traveling into the over-center locking position.
Probable cause
Collapse of the left main landing gear due to previous damage. A factor in the accident was the inadequate annual condition inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07CA057
- Event ID
- 20070221X00203
- Case number
- NYC07CA057
- 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: ab99a81405634b820386b9b07f0b64d7ab724521a64a80aed3229e4a39386ac7; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:04:47.342Z.