ERA09LA467 · Cessna 140A
Cessna 140A · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO) to Westchester County Airport (HPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA467
- 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 140A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 140
- 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
- N9467A
- Operator
- Zaber Eli D
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO), East Hampton, NYTo Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NY
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 reported that the approach was “on speed,” but upon initial touchdown the airplane bounced. The airplane then landed “firm” and immediately veered off the runway surface. Structural damage to the fuselage resulted. An inspector from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that a section of the right main landing gear structure had failed. Postaccident examination of the fracture surface, which was adjacent to a weld line, revealed evidence of a preexisting crack. There was differential rusting on the crack surface indicative of progressive crack extension. The airplane had recently undergone an annual inspection, however the FAA inspector reported that the fracture surface could not be seen without disassembly of the landing gear.
Probable cause
The failure of the right main landing gear due to a preexisting crack adjacent to a weld line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA467
- Event ID
- 20090818X52121
- Case number
- ERA09LA467
- 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: 1e2c6647ce177e4738511d49b49cedad7e85c800d3447d582383f27f18826f74; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:48:49.226Z.