CEN10LA551 · McCauley Gene E RV-6A
McCauley Gene E RV-6A · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Glenndale Airport (8I3) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA551
- 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
McCauley Gene E RV-6A
- Aircraft type
- Mccauley Gene RV-6
- 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
- N343BG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glenndale Airport (8I3), Kokomo, INTo not recorded
- 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 airplane encountered a rise in the turf runway during the landing rollout. The nose landing gear left the ground momentarily and when it came back down it partially collapsed causing the airplane to nose over. The pilot noted that he had relaxed the flight controls and did not have the elevator held up at the time. He added that this was his third landing on the runway that day, and that he normally tried to avoid that area of the runway. A postaccident inspection revealed that the nose landing gear remained attached to the engine mount. However, the strut was curled aft with the nose wheel assembly rotated approximately 90 degrees. The nose wheel assembly and fairing remained attached to the strut. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, left wing, and empennage when it nosed over. Examination of the runway noted a slight rise approximately one-third of the way down the runway. A ground scar consistent with being formed by the nose landing gear was observed down field from the rise. The nose landing gear had been modified in accordance with the airplane kit manufacturer's service bulletin. The bulletin provided for additional ground-to-nose landing gear fork clearance in an effort to reduce the possibility of nose gear collapse and nose over accidents. A review of prior accident reports involving collapse of the nose gear during landing rollout indicated that they all occurred on unpaved runways.
Probable cause
Collapse of the nose landing gear during landing rollout on an unpaved runway due to a loss of ground clearance with the landing gear fork, causing the airplane to nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA551
- Event ID
- 20100921X32715
- Case number
- CEN10LA551
- 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: 0e9229add3ca21cb2c4e27d58ca85864e35a8d7f0252312024c6bd78f84351e0; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:17:46.166Z.