ERA17LA130 · SOCATA TB20
SOCATA TB20 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Key West International Airport (EYW) to Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA130
- 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
SOCATA TB20
- Aircraft type
- Socata TB20
- 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
- N2519T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Key West International Airport (EYW), Key West, FLTo Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB), Daytona Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 28 years (built 1989)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a personal flight, the airplane's alternator warning light flashed and the battery began to discharge, so the pilot conducted a precautionary landing. The nose landing gear did not fully deploy, and the pilot performed a gear-up landing. Examination of the landing gear system revealed the nose landing gear was jammed within the wheel well because the nose strut had overextended. Further, the circlip that held the strut inside the gear assembly was dislodged from the groove. Paint was identified on the outer portion of the circlip. Review of the maintenance records revealed that the nose landing gear was disassembled and repaired more than 2 years and 75 flight hours before the accident flight. The airplane was fully painted after that maintenance. According to the airplane maintenance manual, the circlip should have been fully installed in the groove, and the landing gear should be rotated several times to confirm proper installation. If the circlip had been properly installed inside the nose strut housing groove at the time paint was applied, paint would not have been on the outer surface of the circlip. It is likely that the circlip was improperly installed when the nose landing gear was repaired; it eventually became dislodged sufficiently to cause the internal strut to overextend and the gear to become jammed within the wheel well.
Probable cause
Improper installation of the circlip within the nose gear strut, which resulted in the strut overextending in the wheel well and preventing the nose landing gear from extending during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA130
- Event ID
- 20170226X53533
- Case number
- ERA17LA130
- 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: 9c5c58dfb9bf83be5dc61b99533cb2fa8ba92ab0fe8d8333ec7f7e90e0b41686; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:02:44.402Z.