ERA23LA180 · Cessna 421C
Bravo Aviation Cessna 421C · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Smyrna Airport (MQY) to Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA180
- 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
- 0
- 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 421C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N880JS
- Operator
- Bravo Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Smyrna Airport (MQY), Smyrna, TNTo Leesburg Executive Airport (JYO), Leesburg, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing the airplane and reported that as the main landing gear touched down on the runway the airplane immediately veered to the left. The pilot applied right rudder control input but was unable to control the airplane’s direction. The left main landing gear then collapsed as the airplane departed the runway surface and the airplane came to a stop off the left side of the runway. The airplane’s left wing was substantially damaged during the accident. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector examined the airplane after the accident. He observed that the left main landing gear trunnion was cracked and that the strut had separated from the trunnion. The inspector also found that the hardware connecting the scissor link was missing and that the scissor link did not display damage consistent with a shearing action or other abnormal stress. Given this information it is likely that the hardware securing the scissor was not present at the time of the landing, which allowed the left main landing gear wheel to freely castor about the strut, resulting in the loss of directional control at touchdown.
Probable cause
Separation of the left man landing gear scissor hardware, which resulted in a loss of directional control and subsequent runway excursion during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA180
- Event ID
- 20230405107014
- Case number
- ERA23LA180
- 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: cfaad01b533e6f3811f9261b390effa54f3204ba612fd08e68437b5c9360b003; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:29:16.734Z.