CEN19LA166 · Beech E90
Ameristar Jet Charter Beech E90 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during takeoff
From Majors Airport (GVT) to Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA166
- 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
Beech E90
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 90
- 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
- N176TW
- Operator
- Ameristar Jet Charter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Majors Airport (GVT), Greenville, TXTo Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW), Fort Worth, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 pilots were performing an instructional flight with multiple takeoffs and landings when, during one takeoff, the pilots heard a loud noise, and the right main landing gear (MLG) wheel assembly departed the airplane. The pilots elected to perform an emergency landing at another airport due to its larger runways and emergency personnel and equipment. The airplane landed and came to rest upright on the runway surface. Examination of the airplane after landing revealed that the right main wheel/tire and lower shock absorber assembly departed the upper shock absorber assembly. The separated assembly, which was located near the departure airport, impacted the right horizontal stabilizer after separation, which sustained substantial damage. Metallurgical examination of the assembly revealed that the MLG fractured at the connection between the upper and lower torque knees. Fatigue was identified on a fractured piece of the upper torque knee, and other fractures on the torque knee were consistent with overload. Corrosion assisted in crack initiation, and the crack propagated through fatigue until a critical crack length was reached. It is likely that the fatigue area fractured first and the other connections experienced an increase in loading, which caused them to separate from the MLG assembly.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the right main landing gear upper torque knee.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA166
- Event ID
- 20190612X22423
- Case number
- CEN19LA166
- 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: 8cdc4e10d57d0950dddff37fa138d8f0dbc8c071b191e56a8bb854a7d7bf38e6; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:15:36.717Z.