ERA10LA009 · Butler Aircraft Company AEROSTAR 601
Butler Aircraft Company AEROSTAR 601 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Albert Whitted Airport (SPG) to Brooksville–Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA009
- 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
Butler Aircraft Company AEROSTAR 601
- Aircraft type
- Butler AEROSTAR
- 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
- N81FW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albert Whitted Airport (SPG), St Petersburg, FLTo Brooksville–Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV), Brooksville, FL
- 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 systems
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner selected the landing gear to the extended position in preparation for landing. The amber light, which was designed to illuminate temporarily to indicate that the gear was in transit, did not illuminate during the gear extension, but all other indications were normal. After touchdown on the paved runway, the nose gear did not remain extended and the airplane pitched down until the nose contacted the runway surface. The airplane came to a stop on the runway and sustained substantial damage. Preliminary examination revealed that the cockpit landing gear position indicator lights functioned properly. However, lack of replacement parts availability had prevented the repair of the airplane through at least January 2011, and the detailed functional checks and examinations that were planned to be conducted concurrently with the repair have not been accomplished. Maintenance records documented several recent, preaccident repairs to the nose and main landing gear systems, but it could not be determined whether the nose gear collapse was related to those maintenance activities.
Probable cause
The collapse of the nose landing gear during landing rollout for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA009
- Event ID
- 20091007X12204
- Case number
- ERA10LA009
- 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: 28ed4aebbbcfda9f16e325a85932814291b72c7220a4e6e280c0339ce15f193f; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:23:30.634Z.