WPR14LA134 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: landing gear collapse
From San Luis County Regional Airport (KSBP) to San Luis County Regional Airport (KSBP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA134
- 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 170B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N2252D
- Operator
- Burch Loren W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Luis County Regional Airport (KSBP), San Luis Obispo, CATo San Luis County Regional Airport (KSBP), San Luis Obispo, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1952)
- 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 structures
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, shortly after a normal touchdown, the left main landing gear (MLG) collapsed, which resulted in substantial damage to the gearbox area. Review of videos from three surveillance cameras with different views of the landing corroborated the pilot's report that the landing was normal. Examination of the airplane revealed evidence of corrosion of the left MLG bulkhead assembly in the damaged gearbox area. The corrosion likely weakened the bulkhead's structure and resulted in the collapse of the left MLG.
Probable cause
Corrosion of the bulkhead assembly in the left main landing gearbox area, which resulted in the structural failure of the bulkhead and the subsequent landing gear collapse.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA134
- Event ID
- 20140311X63503
- Case number
- WPR14LA134
- 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: 25ac3a1a9ed28c2eb55da30d7bab20bd253ee00db5ad3a20f9fa08d5abc3fbd3; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:23:35.254Z.