WPR23LA130 · Aero Commander 100-180
Aero Commander 100-180 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Wichita Valley Airport (KF14) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA130
- 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
Aero Commander 100-180
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 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
- N4064X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wichita Valley Airport (KF14), Iowa Park, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1970)
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 flying the last airplane to land in a group of six airplanes. During the landing, the main landing gear touched down on the grass runway and the airplane bounced once. When the airplane touched down again, the nose landing gear collapsed, the propeller blades contacted the grass, and the airplane nosed over. Postaccident examination of the nose landing gear scissor link showed that the fracture face had failed from fatigue, which resulted in a separation of the nose landing gear piston assembly. Based on witness reports, ground scars, and damage to the nosewheel fairing, it’s likely the scissor link failed either during the initial touchdown or when the nose wheel touched down after the bounced landing. The strut remained attached to the airplane at the engine mount. The aircraft logbooks showed that a bushing on the scissor link had been replaced several months before the accident. There was insufficient evidence to determine the source of the fatigue crack and whether a mechanic would have been able to identify the fatigue during a visual inspection.
Probable cause
A fatigue fracture of the nose landing gear scissor link, which resulted in a separation of the nose landing gear piston assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA130
- Event ID
- 20230320106914
- Case number
- WPR23LA130
- 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: eedd796429ed9c49fd91a3501eac546a89a47e1b860b5e2d7d845d4cc92bf49c; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:26:14.027Z.