WPR09CA319 · Cessna LC-126C
Cessna LC-126C · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (KLHM) to Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (KLHM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA319
- 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 LC-126C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna LC-126
- 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
- N1064D
- Operator
- Gerald L LaJoie · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (KLHM), Lincoln, CATo Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (KLHM), Lincoln, CA
- 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
- 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 structures
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that when he entered the traffic pattern he observed the windsock indicating the wind was parallel to the runway. The pilot stated that during landing, the airplane "flared with no drift across the runway and touched down as normal." During the landing roll, the left main landing gear collapsed and separated from the airplane, and the left wing impacted the ground. Despite the pilot's control inputs, the airplane veered to the left and exited the runway, coming to a rest adjacent to the runway. The airplane sustained structural damage to the fuselage and left wing. Post-accident examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector revealed that the left main landing gear, at the point of separation, contained fractures consistent with fatigue cracks. The Safety Board issued Safety Recommendations A-01-001 and A-01-002 in March 2001, and the FAA issued an "Airworthiness Concern Sheet" in September 2007, both regarding landing gear fatigue on various Cessna airplane models with steel spring landing gear.
Probable cause
A fatigue crack in the left main landing gear strut resulting in the collapse of the strut during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA319
- Event ID
- 20090630X82522
- Case number
- WPR09CA319
- 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. 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: ed5eccfc474008315d71e054e9a1cfcca9313dc21e2e990772e1c590090c8469; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:38:59.432Z.