ERA09LA540 · Flight Design Gmbh CTSW
Flight Design Gmbh CTSW · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Gettysburg Regional Airport (W05) to Gettysburg Regional Airport (W05)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA540
- 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
Flight Design Gmbh CTSW
- Aircraft type
- Flight Design CTSW
- 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
- N466CT
- Operator
- Groff Paul D
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gettysburg Regional Airport (W05), Gettysburg, PATo Gettysburg Regional Airport (W05), Gettysburg, PA
- 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
- Organizational issues › Development
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing, the right main landing gear touched first, followed by the left main gear which was accompanied by an audible “thump.” The left main gear collapsed and the airplane veered off the edge of the runway. The left main landing gear attachment fitting was examined at the NTSB materials laboratory and no preexisting fractures were noted. The steel fitting was constructed from tubing and bar stock, and was powder-coated after fabrication. Examination revealed that the fitting failed due to overstress midway along the angled tube portion and that the fractures were consistent with bending loads experienced during landing and taxiing. The examination further revealed that the wall thickness was less than the manufacturer's specifications, and that the interior of the angled tube had been counter-bored prior to the powered coating and final assembly at the factory. Review of the NTSB database revealed that there were two additional accidents that occurred with identical damage incurred; in all instances, the parts failed from an overstress fracture that initiated in approximately the same location.
Probable cause
The failure of the left main wheel attachment fitting due to overstress.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA540
- Event ID
- 20090929X03424
- Case number
- ERA09LA540
- 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: e37c3970a97607e1b87a248cadb0bd800c30507552166094519b5f8749d6d94a; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:21:37.697Z.