ERA16LA271 · Cessna 310L L
Cessna 310L L · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Linden Airport (LDJ) to Linden Airport (LDJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA271
- 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 310L L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N3261X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Linden Airport (LDJ), Linden, NJTo Linden Airport (LDJ), Linden, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot stated that, following a flight in which he was performing a functional check on all systems, when he configured the airplane for landing, he saw three green landing gear lights, visually confirmed that the nose landing gear was down, and then completed the approach for landing. The pilot reported that, at touchdown, he heard a "noise," and the copilot reported hearing a "bang" before the airplane's tail dropped to the runway. During the landing rollout, the copilot attempted to "feather the engines" but was only able to feather the right propeller. The airplane then departed the right side of the runway and settled in grass.
Upon recovery, the nose landing gear were found down and locked, but the main landing gear (MLG) were partially collapsed and would not lock when the airplane was lifted and the gear moved by hand. Examination of the MLG revealed that the landing gear actuator had been driven beyond the down limit switch and that its travel was stopped by the internal stop pin in the actuator. When the landing gear actuator was driven beyond the down limit and toward the internal stop pin, the MLG was released from its down-and-locked position, which allowed it to partially retract before landing. The wreckage was disposed of before a more detailed examination could be performed, and the reason for the overtravel of the MLG actuator could not be determined.
Probable cause
The overtravel of the main landing gear (MLG) actuator, which resulted in the MLG partially collapsing upon landing. The reasons for the overtravel of the MLG actuator could not be determined due to the unavailability of the wreckage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA271
- Event ID
- 20160726X45359
- Case number
- ERA16LA271
- 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: 0d781d0c0a4eb70133116e00be40c9c1c7fa091ec963bc85105a87d329bbe40f; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:42:04.288Z.