ERA14LA170 · Cessna 421 B
Cessna 421 B · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB) to Charleston International Airport (CHS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA170
- 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 421 B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N5929M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB), Columbia, SCTo Charleston International Airport (CHS), Charleston, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1972)
- 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 systems
- 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
The commercial pilot was concluding a personal flight with two passengers on board. The pilot reported that, during the landing roll and after a normal touchdown on the concrete runway, the right main landing gear (MLG) collapsed. The airplane then veered right and struck two runway lights, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing rear spar.
Examination of the airplane revealed that the right MLG down-lock bellcrank was fractured and had separated from its respective trunnion. The bellcrank bolt was sheared at the bolt head, consistent with overload. The upper end of the bellcrank remained attached to the outboard push-pull tube. The lower end of the bellcrank, which attached to the rod end fitting at the lower side link, was broken, consistent with a ductile tension failure. The fracture location was consistent with additional stress that would have been placed on the bellcrank if the landing gear was not properly rigged; however, damage to the landing gear precluded the ability to functionally check or verify whether the gear was properly rigged. Review of maintenance records revealed that the airplane had been operated for about 4 hours since its most recent annual inspection, which was performed about 2 months before the accident. At that time, maintenance, including the adjustment of the right MLG travel, was performed on the airplane.
Probable cause
Inadequate maintenance, which resulted in the collapse of the right main landing gear during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA170
- Event ID
- 20140325X93358
- Case number
- ERA14LA170
- 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: 3cd9e37d12560088d8bcb796a1c6d02e390ba3d30bb2ff8e480277ae71a21547; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:27:12.497Z.