ERA23LA154 · Cessna 310R
Cessna 310R · Accident: landing gear collapse
From The Landings Airport (66TE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA154
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 310R
- 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
- N3844C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From The Landings Airport (66TE), Granbury, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1977)
- 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
- 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 airline transport pilot stated that when he configured the airplane for landing, only the green nose landing gear position light illuminated. After performing a missed approach, the pilot attempted to manually lower the gear, but felt the system was “not engaging correctly” and continued to turn the manual gear extension handle until it would no longer turn. When the airplane was on final approach, the tower controllers advised that the landing gear “appeared down.” The pilot stated that the landing gear warning horn did not activate. During the landing roll, the left main landing gear collapsed, followed by the “folding” of the right main landing gear. Initial examination of the airplane revealed only minor damage, but a subsequent more comprehensive examination revealed substantial damage to the wing spar carry-through structure. Upon recovery, the nose landing gear was found down and locked. The landing gear doors were partially open, consistent with a transition phase between the retracted and extended position. Examination of the main landing gear revealed that the landing gear actuator upper bellcrank had been driven beyond the down limit switch and that its travel was stopped by the internal stop pin in the actuator. When the landing gear actuator was driven beyond the down limit and toward the internal stop pin, the main landing gear was released from its down-and-locked position, which allowed it to partially retract before landing. The reason for the overtravel of the gear actuator could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A main landing gear collapse due to a landing gear actuator overtravel for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA154
- Event ID
- 20230320106911
- Case number
- ERA23LA154
- 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: ed550f8f9bf1cf63691cd5329aadeb5dfbbccf040c7bce36c291c093fc10b7d6; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:26:07.744Z.