Hyannis Air Service Flight 775
Cessna 402C · Incident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Cape Cod Gateway Airport (HYA) to Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12IA550
- 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
- N769EA
- Operator
- Hyannis Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cape Cod Gateway Airport (HYA), Hyannis, MATo Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK), Nantucket, MA
- 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 systems
- Organizational issues › Management
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on approach for a full-stop landing, the pilot extended the landing gear and performed the Before Landing checklist. The airplane landed on its main landing gear, and then, as the pilot lowered the nose, it continued to lower until it contacted the runway.
Postincident examination of the airplane revealed that the nose landing gear drag brace failed near the nose landing gear actuator attachment lug due to a fatigue crack. A review of maintenance records revealed that a crack in the nose landing gear drag brace was repaired in June 2011 and that, following the repair, the drag brace had been installed on two other company airplanes. In July 2012, the nose landing gear drag brace was removed from the second airplane for inspection, during which, a 1/8-inch-long shallow crack was found near the actuator attachment lugs. The crack was blended in accordance with Cessna Service Bulletin MEB91-11, Revision 1, and then a fluorescent dye penetrant inspection of the area was performed. The inspection did not detect any further cracks; however, it is likely that, at this time, some portion of the crack remained. After the drag brace was returned to service, it was installed on the incident airplane on August 3, 2012. Subsequently, the nose landing gear drag brace was visually inspected in-situ twice; however, neither inspection identified the fatigue crack.
At the time of the incident, the airplane had been operated for about 286 cycles since the crack repair in July 2012, which exceeded the 250-cycle inspection interval specified by MEB91-11R1. It is likely that, if the nose landing gear drag brace had been inspected after 250 landings in accordance with the manufacturer's service instructions, the crack would have been detected at that time. Additionally, if the operator had incorporated into its maintenance program Supplemental Inspection 32-20-00, which stated, in part, that the nose landing gear drag braces should be inspected using visual and eddy current inspections and that repair or modification of cracked nose landing gear drag braces was not allowed, it is likely that the nose landing gear drag brace would have been removed from service in July 2012.
Probable cause
Company maintenance personnel’s failure to comply with the airplane manufacturer’s service instructions by not removing the cracked drag brace from service nor inspecting the repaired drag brace at the appropriate interval, which resulted in the failure of the nose landing gear drag brace due to fatigue cracking and collapse of the nose landing gear during the landing roll. Contributing to the failure of the nose landing gear drag brace was the failure of the repair station to detect a remaining portion of a crack following repair.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12IA550
- Event ID
- 20120907X13241
- Case number
- ERA12IA550
- 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, coordinates. 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: f6eb8b92eddab295c584fcda5685c8128b50223092fb2b5bb6a76147c8dee71e; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:46:03.087Z.