ERA25LA165 · Cessna S550
Tecs Zeltzer Elliot Cessna S550 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Conway Horry County Airport (HYW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA165
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 S550
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 550
- 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
- N627HS
- Operator
- Tecs Zeltzer Elliot
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Conway Horry County Airport (HYW), Conway, SCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1985)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On March 19, 2025, about 1445 eastern daylight time, a Cessna S550 airplane, N627HS, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The airline transport pilot and passenger were not injured. The airplane was being operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, the airplane departed from Conway-Horry County Airport (HWY), Conway, South Carolina, and the enroute portion of the flight was uneventful. The pilot subsequently established the airplane on a stabilized approach to Hilton Head Airport (HXD), Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Upon selecting the landing gear to the down position, the three green gear safe lights illuminated, and he continued the approach. After touchdown, the nose gear collapsed as it contacted the runway. The pilot felt a bump, heard scraping, and as the airplane slowed, he turned to exit the runway. Initial examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the nose landing gear actuator was fractured. The landing gear bay and surrounding structure was ground down into the airframe with associated bucking. The nose landing gear actuator was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA165
- Event ID
- 20250403199958
- Case number
- ERA25LA165
- 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, coordinates. 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: 6b46b62a4927825e382493fb6ae6961578583c7e82b01948a76037e243110d5d; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:47:28.157Z.