ERA13LA005 · Cessna 310I
Cessna 310I · Accident: landing gear collapse while taxiing
From Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV) to Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA005
- 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 310I
- 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
- N8025M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV), Burlington, VTTo Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV), Burlington, VT
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he landed the multiengine airplane without incident and while taxiing, the left main landing gear collapsed, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and left horizontal stabilizer. Subsequent examination of the airplane revealed that the left main gear bellcrank pin separated from its bushing. The pin was not located; however, metallurgical examination of the left main gear bellcrank and retraction link revealed significant deformation and fracturing of the bellcrank bushing consistent with a very large force applied along the axis of the link. The deformations on the link bore suggested the pin fractured inside the hole and exited the bore as two separated pieces. While overstress conditions seem probable, other failure modes, such as a significant fatigue crack cannot be ruled out since the pin fragments were not located. The airplane was manufactured about 38 years prior to the accident. It had been operated for about 3,675 total hours and 25 hours since its most recent annual inspection, which was performed about 2 months earlier.
Probable cause
The collapse of the left main landing gear due to a failure of the left main gear bellcrank pin for reasons that could not be determined because the pieces of the fractured bellcrank pin were not located.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA005
- Event ID
- 20121003X54254
- Case number
- ERA13LA005
- 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: 6b0d148cec37bcc35a89e9add23a5042551281d9e8cceafd50462d3cb955f634; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:05:25.577Z.