ERA15LA160 · Cessna 172C
R A Marsh Flying Club Cessna 172C · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Peach State Aerodrome (GA2) to Peach State Aerodrome (GA2)
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
- ERA15LA160
- 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 172C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N8452X
- Operator
- R A Marsh Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peach State Aerodrome (GA2), Williamson, GATo Peach State Aerodrome (GA2), Williamson, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1961)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 made a soft-field landing to a grass runway, and the initial touchdown was on the main wheels with the airplane in a nose-up attitude. As the airplane decelerated, the pilot lowered the nosewheel and felt a "significant" shimmy after it touched down. The pilot thought the shimmy damper had failed, so he applied back pressure on the control wheel to minimize weight on the nosewheel. As the airplane continued to decelerate, the pilot again lowered the nose, and a more substantial vibration occurred. He then raised the nosewheel as much as possible. Eventually, so much groundspeed had depleted that he could no longer hold the airplane's nosewheel off the ground. When the nosewheel touched down again, it separated from the airplane.
Examination of the airplane revealed that a bolt and associated washer and nut that attached the upper torque assembly to the nosewheel steering arm assembly was missing, and it was not located. The pilot said that he saw the bolt during his preflight inspection. It could not be determined when the bolt separated from the nosewheel. According to the airplane manufacturer, without that bolt, the lower shock strut assembly of the nosewheel would freely caster in the shock strut tube assembly, which would result in a significant shimmy, and the nosewheel steering control would be significantly reduced or nonexistent. Without the torque assembly attached, the shimmy dampener would have limited-to-no effect. A review of the airplane maintenance logbooks revealed that no recent maintenance had been conducted on the nosewheel. The fracture surfaces of the broken nosewheel assembly were consistent with having failed due to overload forces during landing, and no preimpact anomalies were noted. It could not be determined how the bolt separated from the nosewheel steering arm assembly.
Probable cause
The separation of the nosewheel upon landing due to a missing bolt that attached the upper torque assembly to the nosewheel steering arm assembly. When and how the bolt separated could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA160
- Event ID
- 20150319X04425
- Case number
- ERA15LA160
- 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: 9ff217cbbc290cce0aa7dba3b6b974e48458c3a7f5ca410bb660d9c76ac33305; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:09:46.148Z.