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Atlas / NTSB / WPR22LA147

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR22LA147

2022-04-06 Tuscon, Arizona, United States Airport · RYN None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N733EJ

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

CESSNA 172N

Year of manufacture

1976 · 46 years old at event

Engine

LYCOMING 0-320 SERIES (180 hp)

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

Last airworthiness date

19761213

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A9D69D

Registrant of record

BAS PART SALES LLC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The loss of directional control during the landing roll, due to missing hardware which resulted in the separation of the nose landing gear torque links.

Factual narrative

The pilot of the airplane reported that, during the landing roll the airplane veered left unexpectedly. The pilot applied corrective action with rudder input, but the airplane continued to veer left, exited the left side of the runway, impacted a ditch, and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right-wing lift strut, vertical stabilizer and rudder. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that, the bolt, spacer, nut and cotter pin connecting the upper torque link and the lower torque link was missing and not observed with the wreckage. It further revealed that the upper and lower torque links were not damaged. Damage to the nose gear and the right main gear was consistent with impact damage when the airplane exited the runway and impacted a ditch. A review of the airplane maintenance records did not reveal any recent maintenance conducted on the nose landing gear torque links. 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 oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained
  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
  • Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Misc hardware-Fasteners-Incorrect service/maintenance

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2022_WPR22LA147.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 or causal vocabulary (maintenance). 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 ↗