Beechcraft 60 N167U

Summary

On 11 March 2024 at about 06:30 local time, a Beechcraft 60 registered N167U was involved in an accident near Chino, California, United States. 6 people were on board and nobody was injured. The aircraft was substantially damaged. The NTSB has published a probable cause for this accident; it is quoted in full below.

Date

11 March 2024 at 06:30

Classification

Accident

Location

Chino, California, United States

Nearest airport

Chino (CNO)

Coordinates

33.9731, -117.6360

Aircraft

Beechcraft 60

Registration

N167U

Category

Airplane

Engines

2

Operator

Not recorded

Operating rule

Part 91: General Aviation

Purpose of flight

Personal

Phase of flight

Not recorded

Route

Goodyear → Unknown

Aircraft damage

Substantial

Weather

VMC

Light

Night

NTSB number

WPR24LA110

Nobody was injured.

Corrosion on a landing gear retract rod assembly which precluded an extension of the gear and resulted in a gear-up landing.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record. This site does not paraphrase or interpret it.

Read the full NTSB narrative

After an uneventful flight, the pilot attempted to extend the landing gear in preparation for landing and observed that the left main landing gear green light annunciator was extinguished. He cycled the landing gear, changed the annunciator light bulb, and attempted to manually extend the landing gear; however, the pilot was unable to extend the landing gear or prompt a green light on the instrument panel to indicate the left main landing gear was down. The pilot then landed with the left main gear retracted, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing. Postaccident examination of the landing gear system revealed that the gear motor functioned normally. Both manual and automatic extension of the left main landing gear failed due to a separation in the retraction rod assembly. The main gear retract system includes a pressure boot that is attached to a bushing on the retract rod assembly that extends and retracts the landing gear. A metallurgical examination of the landing gear retract rod found that the rod fractured due to buckling from compression overload during the landing gear extension. The primer on the rod was worn where the bushing for the pressure boot slides along the rod during extension and retraction operations, which exposed the underlying steel surfaces to oxidation. The bushing likely seized on the corroded (oxidized) rod near the retracted position due to increased friction from the accumulation of corrosion products. The rod then buckled during normal extension operations due to constraint from the pressure boot and the seized bushing. With the rod segment outboard of the bushing held in place near the retracted position by the pressure boot and seized bushing, the left main landing gear would not have been able to extend when the main landing gear actuator rotated to extend the gear. The maintenance logbooks indicated that the retract rod would have been inspected during the annual inspection seven months before the accident; however, it is unknown if a visual inspection would have found the wear on the retract rod.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record.