WPR10CA011 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Emmett, ID (no airport) to Pistol Creek, ID (no airport)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA011
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N1674C
- Operator
- Maslen Holbrook
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Emmett, ID (no airport)To Pistol Creek, ID (no airport)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing at a remote dirt/grass airstrip where the winds were gusting and variable in direction. Although the touchdown was normal, as he made rudder and brake inputs to maintain directional control, the right main gear leg separated from its mounting structure, and the right wing sustained substantial damage when it contacted the terrain. An inspection of the gear leg attachment hardware determined that the nut on the gear leg attachment bolt had been stripped from the bolt, thus allowing the bolt to come out of the attachment structure. During the pilot's initial contact with the NTSB Investigator-In-Charge, the pilot stated that the airplane's right brake had failed during the landing roll, but in a follow-up interview the pilot stated that he believes that the brake was working fine until the moment the gear leg separated from its mount.
Probable cause
The separation of one of the airplane's main landing gear legs during landing in variable gusting wind conditions, due to the nut being stripped from the attachment bolt.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA011
- Event ID
- 20091010X40016
- Case number
- WPR10CA011
- 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: 0dee1662b0084b33a908a7e998ab4bd01782fa2d11cc90b0b9fb5e4ac9cc1e65; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:23:49.171Z.