ERA11IA172 · Mitsubishi MU-2B-20
Mitsubishi MU-2B-20 · Incident: landing gear collapse
From Northeastern Regional Airport (EDE) to Lowcountry Regional Airport (RBW)
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
- ERA11IA172
- 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
- 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
Mitsubishi MU-2B-20
- Aircraft type
- Mitsubishi MU-2
- 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
- N52CD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Northeastern Regional Airport (EDE), Edenton, NCTo Lowcountry Regional Airport (RBW), Watertown, SC
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported hearing a “pop” sound from the nose gear area when the gear was extended for the landing. Toward the end of the landing roll, the nose gear collapsed. A postaccident examination of the nose gear revealed that the bolt that holds the downlock drag brace joint link to the airframe structure had fractured. A metallurgical examination revealed that the bolt failed in reverse bending fatigue, which is associated with the bolt having insufficient clamping pressure (looseness). The airplane’s last required inspection was about 70 flight hours and 40 gear cycles before the nose gear collapsing, and the nose gear downlock system rigging should have been inspected at that time.
Probable cause
The inadequate inspection and rigging of the nose landing gear downlock mechanism by maintenance personnel, which resulted in the failure of a bolt and the subsequent collapse of the nose gear during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11IA172
- Event ID
- 20110302X82843
- Case number
- ERA11IA172
- 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: ad9d61538e8ce219d556b70bf38514976c728fac7b0a1c587b5af261e6b97be3; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:52:30.597Z.