ERA13LA191 · Cessna 414 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 414 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to Hammonton Municipal Airport (N81)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA191
- 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 414 UNDESIGNAT Narrative disagrees
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 414
- 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
- N37480
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo Hammonton Municipal Airport (N81), Hammonton, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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, during a repositioning flight, he lowered the landing gear during the approach and confirmed that it was extended by observing the landing gear position indicator lights. Immediately after touchdown, the airplane veered left. The pilot applied full right rudder, but the airplane continued veering left and departed the left side of the runway. The airplane struck several trees and was subsequently engulfed in a postcrash fire. A postaccident examination revealed that the nose landing gear had separated from its mount at the left trunnion. Fractographic examination revealed a pre-existing crack at the surface of the left trunnion lug. Subsequent investigation revealed that the fractured part was a used part recently taken from another airplane that had over 20,000 service hours. The crack at the surface of the trunnion lug could not have been seen during a visual inspection of the trunnion assembly before its installation because such cracks can only be identified by eddy current inspections. Multiengine Service Bulletin MEB88-5 requires the trunnion assembly to be subjected to eddy current inspection and, if cracks are identified during this inspection, the trunnion assembly must be replaced; however, the inspection requirements are not applicable to Part 91 operators.
Probable cause
A loss of control during landing due to the failure of the nose landing gear's left trunnion lug.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA191
- Event ID
- 20130405X35640
- Case number
- ERA13LA191
- 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: 014e3f040b69dc333131f1d7d44e79362cf8d3ef90601b8d1f4307e4a5658917; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:13:57.525Z.