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CEN10LA474 · Cessna A185F

11 Aug 2010 · Farmington, NM, United States

Cessna A185F · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing

From Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF) to Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN10LA474
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 A185F

Aircraft type
Cessna 185
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
N4492
Operator
Richard B. Negley · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF), San Antonio, TXTo Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN), Farmington, NM
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
Loss of control on ground
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 structures
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot said that very little crosswind correction was required as he landed on runway 25. After rolling a few hundred feet, the airplane "swerved very strongly to the right." Opposite brake and rudder had no effect and the airplane departed the runway and impacted terrain. The left landing gear collapsed and the left wing and elevator sustained leading edge damage. Federal Aviation Administration inspectors found that the through-bolt that attached the inboard end of the gear leg to the airframe hard-point had pre-existing damage. Further examination found that threads from the failed nut remained stuck in the threads of the bolt, indicating that the nut failed and stripped off the bolt, leaving the inboard end of the gear leg loose and free to move up and down. This allowed the gear leg to move forward and aft. The chaffing on the longeron, inboard of the gear leg attach point, was indicative that the bolt-nut combination had been loose for some time. There were indications of looseness on the right gear leg attach bolt after the leg was removed for transport.

Probable cause

Pre-existing damage of the through-bolt that attached the inboard end of the gear leg to the airframe hard-point, likely caused during maintenance on the gear.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN10LA474
Event ID
20100812X35943
Case number
CEN10LA474
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: e7d719bd1579ff1ed6ccac4eee570970ea2cf9d4aff6f416dfc08182dc408cf3; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:49:49.237Z.