ERA26LA113 · Cessna 320C
Cessna 320C · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA113
- 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 320C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 320
- 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
- N3034T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a post-maintenance flight following the completion of an annual inspection, the pilot/ mechanic reported that the preflight inspection, engine run-up, and landing gear retraction after takeoff revealed no anomalies. While on approach to land, the pilot selected the landing gear down and observed that the gear down indicator light did not illuminate. He cycled the landing gear and subsequently performed a low approach; air traffic control personnel reported that the landing gear appeared to be extended. The pilot remained in the traffic pattern and attempted a manual gear extension, but the indication anomaly persisted. He again cycled the landing gear and verified circuit breaker continuity with no change noted. After a second low approach, the pilot elected to land. During the landing roll, as the airplane decelerated and the pilot initiated a right turn to exit the runway, the left main landing gear collapsed. The airplane’s left wing and left horizontal stabilizer contacted the runway surface, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot/mechanic stated that during the annual inspection, there were no adjustments made to the landing gear rigging and the gear was cycled several times with no anomalies noted. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left main gear intermediate push-pull tube was deformed, and the side brace lock link was misrigged. The left hydraulic brake hose was misrouted and not clamped in position. Both main gear side brace lock link springs were corroded and the right main gear downlock tension was below the manufacture’s minimum limits. According to the airplane’s maintenance manual, the landing gear operational and rigging checks are to be performed every 12 months or 100 hours. Based on this information, the inspection of the landing gear that was completed by the maintenance personnel likely was not sufficient to detect and correct these discrepancies before they resulted in the accident.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to perform an adequate inspection of the airplane’s landing gear, which resulted in a collapse of the left main landing gear during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA113
- Event ID
- 20260213202433
- Case number
- ERA26LA113
- 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: f34a4a4f5255ae92060b8b3b5778046751a2949d8265dcf3469b6d52ca9dcde2; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:45:29.771Z.