The cargo aircraft Swearingen SA227-AC Metro III of Aeronaves TSM suffered a runway excursion during takeoff from Saltillo-Plan de Guadalupe International Airport in Mexico. The airplane was trying to take off, but right hand main landing gear collapsed that forced the pilot to deviate from the track, managing to stop at about 600 m from the starting point. Fortunately the three crew members, who were making a training flight, were unharmed.
The accident caused the mobilization of emergency bodies and Civil Protection of the state. Firefighters from the airport controlled the situation, which allowed the crew to come down from the damaged aircraft.
Personnel of Civil Aeronautics proceeded to initiate the investigations in the place of the accident, in order to determine the causes that forced the pilot of the airplane to leave the track.
The Swearingen SA227-AC Metro III is a 19-seat, pressurized, twin-turboprop airliner first produced by Swearingen Aircraft and later by Fairchild at a plant in San Antonio, Texas, United States. Ultimately a stretch of the Merlin III was designed, sized to seat 22 passengers and called the SA226-TC Metro. Because FAA regulations limited an airliner to no more than 19 seats if no flight attendant was to be carried, the aircraft was optimized for that number of passengers. The standard engines offered were two TPE331-3UW turboprops driving three-bladed propellers.
