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Atlas / NTSB / ERA23LA277

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA23LA277

2023-05-31 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Airport · PHL None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N515AM

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

ROCKWELL INTERNATIONAL CORP 695

Year of manufacture

1980 · 43 years old at event

Engine

AIRESEARCH TPE331 SERIES (904 hp)

Seats / Engines

11 seats · 2 engines

Last airworthiness date

19800425

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A6740E

Registrant of record

ALLEN MYLAND INC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

Failure of the nose gear support structure for unknown reasons, which resulted in the nose landing gear collapsing during landing.

Factual narrative

On May 31, 2023, at 1545 eastern daylight time, a Rockwell International Corporation 695 airplane, N515AM, was involved in an accident at the Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The private pilot and the passenger were not injured. The airplane was operated as a 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to the pilot, he made normal landing but began to feel a “wobble” in the nose landing gear before it collapsed. The nose landing gear was pushed back into its wheel well and the airplane slid to a stop on the forward lower fuselage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the skin, stringers, and frames that required a major repair. The pressure vessel was not breached. According to the airplane type certificate holder, who performed an engineering inspection and some repairs to the airplane in preparation for it to be ferried for additional repairs, the nose landing gear upper drag brace pivot support structure was found damaged. This damage may have resulted in the drag brace rotating and the landing gear retracting/collapsing upon landing. It was not determined as to why the support structure failed. The pilot said that after a normal touch down he felt a wobble in the nose landing gear before it collapsed. The nose landing gear was pushed back into its wheel well and the airplane slid to a stop on the forward lower fuselage, resulting in substantial damage. Postaccident examination revealed the upper drag brace pivot support structure of the nose landing gear was damaged, which most likely allowed the drag brace to rotate and the nose gear to retract/collapse. It was not determined why the support structure failed. 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).

  • Aircraft-Aircraft systems-Landing gear system-Nose/tail landing gear-Unknown/Not determined

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2023_ERA23LA277.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

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.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗