WPR23LA226 · Cessna 310I
Cessna 310I · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Grant County International Airport (MWH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA226
- 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 310I
- 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
- N6PK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grant County International Airport (MWH), Moses Lake, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1964)
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while on final approach he extended the gear, and a green light illuminated signifying that the gear was down. The landing was “firm” and, shortly after touchdown, the airplane’s right main landing gear slowly collapsed, causing the right wing to drop. The airplane veered to the right, exited the runway, and came to rest in a field about 100 ft from the runway centerline. During the accident sequence, the airplane sustained substantial damage to the right horizontal stabilizer and elevator. Postaccident examination of the right main landing gear fracture surface revealed that the side brace lock assembly likely fractured due to excessive axial compression loads that resulted in a ductile overstress fracture. Additionally, the bent side brace lock assembly attachment bolt at the lower end of the lock link also indicated that the loads associated with the failure of the attachment pin exceeded the design axial loads for the side brace lock assembly and were consistent with overload of the side brace lock assembly. The bearings and pin that attached the side brace lock to the lower end of the bellcrank, which were not recovered, were likely fractured as a result of the loads. The damage to the gear indicated that it likely failed as a result of the hard landing.
Probable cause
The failure of the side brace lock assembly of the right main landing gear due to overstress as a result of a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA226
- Event ID
- 20230612192361
- Case number
- WPR23LA226
- 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: d8a12df3043cb743f9c4a2849ad010463effbe4de69ee398e43b8f49f69c0aba; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:43:21.316Z.