LAX08LA060 · Cessna 305-A
Honolulu Soaring Club Cessna 305-A · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Kawaihapai Airfield (PHDH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA060
- 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 305-A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 305
- 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
- N473GF
- Operator
- Honolulu Soaring Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kawaihapai Airfield (PHDH), Mokuleia, HITo 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
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 observed that the windsocks located at each end of runway indicated tailwinds of about 10 knots in either direction. The midfield sock indicated a direct crosswind from the north. The pilot elected to approach the east runway, and touched down abeam the midfield windsock. Upon touchdown the airplane encountered a left-to-right crosswind, and as the airplane decelerated, the pilot noticed the wind shift to a quartering right tailwind. He elected to abort the landing. As he advanced the throttle the engine sputtered, the left main gear collapsed, and the airplane ground looped as it approached the runway's edge. Examination of the left main landing gear spring strut revealed that the strut separated where the wheel bolts to the strut. The fracture face of the strut was granular in texture and uniform matte gray in color. The fracture surface for the section of landing gear strut that remained attached to the wheel was closely examined, and it was noted that the fracture surface had an approximate 1/16 inch flat dark triangular section at the corner of the mounting bolt hole. The Safety Board Materials Laboratory examination confirmed the presence of a 0.072 inch fatigue crack at this location that would be sufficient to cause a failure of the strut.
Probable cause
The failure of the left main landing gear strut due to fatigue. Contributing to the failure was the side load placed on the landing gear while making a crosswind landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA060
- Event ID
- 20080516X00689
- Case number
- LAX08LA060
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: cf795655bc6b57c1643a1667944b0cfbb44e181727ac55f795cfdc0f3a5d8828; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:39:53.731Z.