ERA11LA221 · Cessna 310F
Cessna 310F · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB) to Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA221
- 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 310F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N6781X
- Operator
- Edward Moon
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB), Sanford, FLTo Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB), Sanford, FL
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and private pilot were performing touch-and-go landings. While retracting the landing gear, they heard a loud bang. The gear-up light illuminated, indicating that all three landing gears were retracted and the doors were closed. The instructor concluded that the noise came from the landing gear doors closing into each other. The flight continued, and two more landings were planned: one touch-and-go and one full stop. The landing gear appeared to operate normally during the touch-and-go. Upon extending the gear for the full stop landing, the gear-down light failed to illuminate. After checking the gear down indicating system, a visual check with the tower controllers confirmed that all three landing gears were in the down position. During touchdown, the nose gear collapsed. A postaccident examination of the nose gear assembly revealed that the nose landing gear strut reservoir lacked air pressure and the fluid level was very low. This underserviced condition caused binding in the nose gear fork assembly and failure of a nose gear push rod, which prevented the nose gear from extending to the full down and locked position.
Probable cause
The failure of the nose landing gear due to inadequate servicing of the nose gear strut reservoir.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA221
- Event ID
- 20110403X60004
- Case number
- ERA11LA221
- 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: b6f46384dee84ed175e9300094be442a014aa34028610eadfe2c42fe9d55714f; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:00:05.024Z.