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WPR20LA165 · Omf 100 160

2 Jun 2020 · Glendale, AZ, United States

Omf 100 160 · Accident: landing gear collapse

From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU) to Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU)

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Event

NTSB case
WPR20LA165
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

Omf 100 160

Aircraft type
Omf 100
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
N225CK
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZTo Glendale Municipal Airport (GEU), Glendale, AZ
Aircraft age
About 19 years (built 2001)
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 › Action/decision
  • Personnel issues › Task performance

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot and pilot-rated passenger took turns performing touch-and-go maneuvers. According to their recount, the landings were smooth, and they did not observe or hear anything unusual. After their final touchdown, which was also normal, they heard a thud, and the airplane veered to the right. The pilot attempted to correct the movement but was unsuccessful. The airplane departed the right runway edge, the right main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane came to rest. Examination of the airplane revealed that the right main landing gear strut had failed due to preexisting upward crushing deformation of the longitudinal frame tube where it mated with the upper clamp at the outboard right main landing gear location. The longitudinal frame tube was likely crushed during a prior landing, which reduced the clamping force on the gear leg. Witness marks and rubbed surfaces on the longitudinal frame tube and upper clamp surfaces and a fatigue fracture on the inboard attachment bolt suggest that the looseness that resulted from the crushed tube had existed for some time before the accident. Further, the fatigue cracks that led to the fracture of the inboard attachment bolt likely developed due to looseness at the outboard attachment location. The airplane manufacturer released an alert service bulletin (ASB) requiring an inspection of the longitudinal frame tube for cracks at 50-hour intervals and to measure the tube’s wall thickness. The ASB was followed-up by a Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directive (AD) that referred to the procedures established within the ASB. Entries in the accident airplane’s logbook indicated that the main landing gear had been inspected in accordance with the AD. However, the mechanic who performed the inspection did not comply with the procedures prescribed by the ASB, despite it being a requirement specifically listed in the AD. This required a reinforcement of the frame tube and would have prevented the landing gear failure; however, no repair was ever made.

Probable cause

Maintenance personnel’s failure to comply with the procedures of an airworthiness directive, which resulted in a fatigue failure of the longitudinal frame tube during landing and collapse of the right main landing gear.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record WPR20LA165
Event ID
20200603X22008
Case number
WPR20LA165
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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-06-03.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 36d11dd97e0368df8409bdb3487b85a2843d09ec37858f28521b0758a2a02bd2; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:44:31.879Z.