ERA19LA169 · Hawker Siddeley HUNTER MK58
Airborne Tactical Advantage Hawker Siddeley HUNTER MK58 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Newport News Williamsburg International Airport (PHF) to Newport News Williamsburg International Airport (PHF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA169
- 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
- Government
- 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
Hawker Siddeley HUNTER MK58
- Aircraft type
- Hawker Siddeley HUNTER
- 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
- N343AX
- Operator
- Airborne Tactical Advantage
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newport News Williamsburg International Airport (PHF), Newport News, VATo Newport News Williamsburg International Airport (PHF), Newport News, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1959)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a training flight under the supervision of a flight instructor in a second airplane. Following a touch-and-go landing, the landing gear was retracted; however, the right main landing gear indicated unsafe. After consultation with the flight instructor, the pilot again attempted to lower the landing gear and then observed a normal indication that all three landing gear were down and locked into position. As the pilot turned onto the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, he noticed a hydraulic warning light. The flight instructor also noticed fluid streaming from the right side of the airplane. Shortly thereafter, the pilot noted low hydraulic pressure and it was decided he would conduct a no-flap landing, utilizing the remaining hydraulic pressure to boost the flight controls. Immediately upon touchdown, the right main landing gear collapsed. The pilot was unable to control the airplane and it veered off the right side of the runway before stopping. The right main landing gear strut was broken in two parts. Examination of the broken right gear components revealed small crack features consistent with a preexisting progressive crack at the base of the aft pivot pin bore. It is likely that the preexisting fatigue crack in the landing gear propagated to the point of failure. The crack also likely became large enough for hydraulic fluid to leak following the touch-and-go landing and failed catastrophically when the airplane touched down during the final landing.
Probable cause
The failure of the right main landing gear due to a fatigue cracking.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA169
- Event ID
- 20190509X23544
- Case number
- ERA19LA169
- 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: 219090fcd06a068b960d57538a0b50ef8260611dac101136913ab95b494c1f70; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:57:44.459Z.