NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ERA12CA140
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
A failure of the left main landing gear due to a preexisting crack and corrosion, which resulted in a loss of directional control during landing.
Factual narrative
The pilot stated that he was landing to refuel during a pleasure flight. He reported that after touchdown on the runway, the tailwheel-equipped airplane began drifting to the left. The pilot applied right rudder to correct, but the airplane continued to travel to the left and departed the left side of the runway. The airplane contacted a ditch and nosed over coming to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer and left wing. Postaccident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the left main landing gear leg had collapsed and exhibited severe corrosion and evidence of a preexisting crack. The pilot reported that there were no other mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane. The pilot stated that upon touchdown on the runway, the tailwheel-equipped airplane drifted to the left. The pilot applied right rudder to correct, but the airplane continued to travel to the left and departed the left side of the runway. The airplane contacted a ditch and nosed over and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the vertical stabilizer and left wing. Postaccident examination revealed that the left main landing gear leg had collapsed and exhibited severe corrosion and evidence of a preexisting crack. The pilot also reported that the main gear strut failed because of cracks and corrosion. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- C Aircraft-Aircraft systems-Landing gear system-Main landing gear-Failure - C
- C Aircraft-Aircraft systems-Landing gear system-Main gear strut/axle/truck-Fatigue/wear/corrosion - C
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2012_ERA12CA140.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type. Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2020 · Conference paper
Concurrent Sessions: Session 8A - Technology in Aviation
- arXiv 2020 · arXiv preprint
Continuation Method with the Trusty Time-stepping Scheme for Linearly Constrained Optimization with Noisy Data
The nonlinear optimization problem with linear constraints has many applications in engineering fields such as the visual-inertial navigation and localization of an unmanned aerial vehicle maintaining…
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