WPR16LA141 · Luscombe 8A
Luscombe 8A · Accident: aircraft structural failure during takeoff
From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV) to Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA141
- 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
Luscombe 8A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N2759K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NVTo Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1947)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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 airline transport pilot reported that, during the takeoff rotation, he heard a noise that seemed to be coming from the landing gear. Once airborne, the passenger observed the right wheel, including the axle assembly, hanging sideways from a brake cable. The pilot subsequently landed on a grassy area between the runway and a taxiway with the left wheel first, holding the right side off the ground as long as possible. The right main landing gear (MLG) leg then contacted the ground and skidded for about 50 ft before it dug into the grass, which resulted in a nose-over.
Postaccident examination of the right MLG leg revealed that it failed at the axle cluster, which had internal corrosion; the upper portion of the leg was not sealed. The type certificate holder had issued a service recommendation (SR) over 20 years before the accident that addressed corrosion damage above the axle weld area, which had led to the failure of MLG legs. The owner stated that this SR had not been accomplished on the airplane. It is likely that the accident could have been prevented if the SR had been accomplished even though it was not required by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Probable cause
The failure of a main landing gear leg during takeoff due to corrosion, which resulted in a nose-over during the subsequent landing on a grassy area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA141
- Event ID
- 20160717X15309
- Case number
- WPR16LA141
- 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: 821daee65fa8421eff6a5bfb000b4f03d409363065979ef5938df620d7a4825c; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:39:45.146Z.