ERA18LA201 · Aero Commander 560 Undesignat
Tarvair Eclipse Aero Commander 560 Undesignat · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Orange County Airport (ORG) to Bob Sikes Airport (CEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA201
- 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
- 0
- 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
Aero Commander 560 Undesignat
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 560
- 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
- N2705B
- Operator
- Tarvair Eclipse
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orange County Airport (ORG), Orange, TXTo Bob Sikes Airport (CEW), Crestview, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 63 years (built 1955)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had not operated for about 7 years and the pilot was relocating it from Texas to Florida for repairs under a special flight permit (ferry permit) issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Before departing on the flight, both main landing gear bungies were replaced, and their replacement was documented during the FAA's pre-ferry flight inspection. During the third stop of the trip, the airplane's right main landing gear collapsed and the airplane veered off the side of the runway, resulting in substantial damage.
Postaccident examination revealed that the right landing gear bungies were missing; however, the airplane was removed from the accident site before the examination could take place, and whether the bungies separated before or after the accident could not be determined. No further testing or examination of the landing gear was performed, and the reason for the gear collapse was not determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A collapse of the right main landing gear for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA201
- Event ID
- 20180726X33528
- Case number
- ERA18LA201
- 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: 812d074d5477266f6f2aca54c77a9d79b002272130bc4d67bcfc4ba787457f0c; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:59:25.454Z.