The pilot of the Cessna 172 reported that, during the landing roll at the airport in Tucson, Arizona, the airplane veered left unexpectedly.
He applied corrective action with rudder input, but the airplane continued to veer left, exited the left side of the runway, hit a ditch, and nosed over.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right-wing lift strut, vertical stabilizer, and rudder.
Post-accident 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.
A review of the airplane maintenance records did not reveal any recent maintenance conducted on the nose landing gear torque links.
Probable Cause: 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.
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This April 2022 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
Aircraft owners and pilots need to be mindful that maintenance Errors create significant hazard and must act accordingly the most likely time for an aircraft to suffer mechanical problem is on the first flight after maintenance be thoroughly Skeptical anytime Aircraft comes out of the shop your preflight and post flight maintenance test flight or last line of defense against maintenance errors.
A lack of attention to detail and lack of inspection after the maintenance action. Lack of proper preflight check list. Inexcusable.
Pilot, A&P, 40 + years as aircraft mechanic.
Why do you say failure to preflight? What if it looked good on the ground but came apart in the air?
The nut and bolt cannot come out if the cotter pin is there locking the castellated nut in place, as on the axle nut with a cotter pin, in the pic.
The cotter pins or the nut had to be missing before the flight.
It’s easy to see the hardware while sumping the gascollator…if he did that.?
I fly a similar Cessna with the same nose gear.
Either intentional sabotage or drugs in the workplace.
Regards/J
From the pic of the nose strut, the bolt attaching the fork to the strut tube is also missing.
[ the tube is an interference fit to the fork, so the bolt really only holds the upper failing attach point.]
This bolts has to be removed to remove the wheel faring. So, maybe someone serviced the tire or bearings and didn’t completely reassemble the nose gear parts.?
Also, the fork casting split in half at the tube…interesting, since this is the newer, stronger casting..??
Odd… sometimes I get dumb. For the life of me, I could NOT find the close-up photos of the NLG you were alluding-to. Please advise the link.
it’s in the ‘FAA Record of email correspondence’, in the docket.
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket?ProjectID=104911