WPR20LA187 · Cessna 310 B
Cessna 310 B · Accident: landing gear collapse
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA187
- 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
Cessna 310 B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N6602B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on final approach for landing, with the landing gear extended, when the landing gear indication light in the cockpit started to flicker. After a few seconds, the light became solid. The pilot visually verified that all three landing gear were extended and then proceeded to land. Upon touchdown, the left main landing gear (MLG) collapsed. The airplane slid off the runway and came to rest in the adjacent field, resulting in substantial damage to the wings. A postaccident examination of the landing gear system revealed several discrepancies, including missing cotter pins and other hardware, improper tension on the landing gear downlocks, and mis-rigging of the landing gear actuator. Because the most recent maintenance for the landing gear system was documented 15 days before the accident, it is likely these discrepancies were not addressed during the maintenance (which included a main landing gear wheel, tire, and brake inspection). The most severe discrepancy was likely the mis-rigged condition of the retraction system, which would have allowed the left main landing gear to enter an overcenter position and collapse during landing.
Probable cause
Improper maintenance of the landing gear system which resulted in a partial gear collapse during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA187
- Event ID
- 20200618X91338
- Case number
- WPR20LA187
- 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, cause areas. 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: 0cd7f361e7f636fee6de044779f06ffe2fbf013a41fee4e5924774652f16a2e7; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:52:53.644Z.