CEN12LA672 · SOCATA TBM 700
SOCATA TBM 700 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI) to Horseshoe Bay Resort Airpark (DZB)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA672
- 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
SOCATA TBM 700
- Aircraft type
- Socata TBM-700
- 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
- N850ZM
- Operator
- Randell D. Vinson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI), Abilene, TXTo Horseshoe Bay Resort Airpark (DZB), Horseshoe Bay, TX
- 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
- 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 pilot reported that, after configuring the airplane for landing, the cockpit indications showed that the landing gear was down and locked. Upon landing, the right main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane subsequently veered off the runway.
Postaccident examination of the landing gear revealed that the right main landing gear actuator rod end was separated from the actuator ball joint. No other anomalies were noted. Further examination of the actuator rod and ball joint revealed that the ball joint was not centered or set in its normal position. In April 2013, after several other events involving similar landing gear malfunctions, the manufacturer issued two mandatory service bulletins (SB), which outlined protocols for inspecting the pistons and rods of the landing gear actuators, inspecting the ball joint centering of the landing gear actuators, and measuring the ball joint mismatches. In March 2014, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive, which required compliance with the manufacturer's SBs and the repair or replacement of affected parts.
Probable cause
The off-centered right main landing gear ball joint, which resulted in the right main landing gear collapsing during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA672
- Event ID
- 20121015X52420
- Case number
- CEN12LA672
- 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: 37ffc2cdda1affb4368c02a88a5afaf5ef310febe4b00324a050e8d3fe7f46cb; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:09:34.974Z.