GAA15LA092 · Czech Aircraft Works Spol SRO SPORTCRUISER A
Czech Aircraft Works Spol SRO SPORTCRUISER A · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH) to Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15LA092
- 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
Czech Aircraft Works Spol SRO SPORTCRUISER A
- Aircraft type
- Czech Aircraft Works SPORTCRUISER
- 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
- N642JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH), Fresno, CATo Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH), Fresno, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2008)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the third landing of the flight and as the nose landing gear (NLG) touched down, an immediate shimmy developed that sounded "clunky." The NLG subsequently collapsed, and the light-sport airplane then skidded to a stop on the runway and sustained substantial damage to the firewall. The pilot stated that the landing flare was "normal" and that the main landing gear touched down first. He reported that there were no anomalies with the landing gear during the previous two landings.
Examination of the NLG assembly revealed that the NLG leg was fractured at the weld joint in the upper attachment area and that the fracture features were consistent with fatigue cracking. Multiple fatigue fracture origins were found at the forward edge of the assembly weld on the left side of the NLG leg. The fatigue crack penetrated about 50 percent of the NLG leg's cross-section and was consistent with side-to-side loading of the leg.
Probable cause
The failure of the nose landing gear (NLG) leg due to fatigue fractures, which resulted in the NLG collapsing during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15LA092
- Event ID
- 20150528X54816
- Case number
- GAA15LA092
- 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: fb9d63c2afef2f5fdd74b6e036e4fc5e6fa16615d2dea456e73ebeb3c091c51f; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:21:43.858Z.