SkyWest Airlines Embraer ERJ170 200LR incident
Embraer ERJ170 200LR · Incident: landing gear collapse
From George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) to MMTY · Monterrey
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG17IA005
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Embraer ERJ170 200LR
- Aircraft type
- Embraer ERJ170
- 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
- N161SY
- Operator
- SkyWest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), Houston, TXTo MMTY · Monterrey
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2016)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Based on the material laboratory examinations, the area around the failure point contained higher than allowable levels of retained austenite. The presence of too much retained austenite subsequently resulted in the formation of intergranular cracking. The intergranular cracking resulted in the formation of progressive cracking, which caused the separation and subsequent failure of the downlock spring. After the failure, the spring became lodged in the nose landing gear yoke, which prevented the nose gear from achieving a down and locked position. Without the NLG being fully down and locked, as the weight of the aircraft during landing was transferred to the nose and main landing gear, the NLG subsequently retracted back into the nose gear wheel.
Probable cause
A failure of the nose landing gear down lock spring which precluded normal downlock operation of the nose landing gear. The spring failure was due to the presence of too much retained austenite which led to the formation of progressive cracking and subsequent failure of the spring.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG17IA005
- Event ID
- 20161205X55455
- Case number
- ENG17IA005
- 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: f582f6010f71f5e209ebeb876a6e9f9444eb9d8da4e4f3b0300e2367a620da57; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:52:38.802Z.