Hyannis Air Service Flight 1284
Cessna 402C · Incident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Antonio Rivera Rodriguez Airport (VQS) to Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10IA384
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 402C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N402VN
- Operator
- Hyannis Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Antonio Rivera Rodriguez Airport (VQS), Isla de Vieques, PRTo Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU), San Juan, PR
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Organizational issues › Management
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following the pilot’s brake application during the landing roll, an undetected fatigue crack that originated on the right upper barrel and trunnion assembly resulted in the separation of the lower portion of the landing gear. The airplane came to rest upright and the pilot and passenger successfully evacuated. A postincident inspection of the failed barrel revealed fatigue that originated on the outer surface and penetrated approximately 90 percent of the wall thickness. At the time of the incident, the operator had been performing visual inspections of the barrels looking for leaks due to cracking from the inside; the last visual inspection of the barrel was performed about 62 hours earlier. At the time of the incident, the manufacturer did not have a special inspection in place to detect fatigue cracks on the outer surface of the barrel, though there had been previous incidents and accidents in which the barrel of the upper barrel and trunnion assembly was documented to have failed due to undetected fatigue cracks that originated on the outer surface.
Probable cause
The airplane manufacturer’s inadequate inspection procedures, resulting in the undetected fatigue cracking of the right upper barrel and trunnion assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10IA384
- Event ID
- 20100729X44254
- Case number
- ERA10IA384
- 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: d4467861c573946146b106d49b4d6a88d1819b52786a39a1a2e680e40a7658e9; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:46:25.099Z.