User Error: Lufthansa 787 Nose Gear Collapsed After Required Locking Pin Was Not Installed During Test

On June 4, 2026, Lufthansa was scheduled to operate flight LH450 from Frankfurt (FRA) to Los Angeles (LAX) with a recently acquired Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (registered D-ABPQ).

While the aircraft was being prepared for flight, the nose gear collapsed, resulting in the nose section falling to the ground. As a result, the aircraft suffered substantial damage to portions of the forward fuselage and the nose landing-gear bay structure. The incident quickly went viral, with internet experts coming out of the woodwork, speculating everything from a maintenance misstep to Boeing making shoddy aircraft.

It was later revealed that same day that pilots and technicians were on board trying to diagnose an issue related to the landing gear.

The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) has now released an interim report, discussing its preliminary findings, giving insight into why the incident occurred.

According to the report, a total of 28 people were on board including cleaning and ground personnel, cabin crew, pilots, and technicians. During preparation, the techs were trying to diagnose an issue with the landing gear. As per the Boeing Fault Isolation Manual, they were required to cycle the landing gear level to see if the fault would go away.

As the aircraft was on the ground, the maintenance team would need to insert landing-gear downlock pins in the respecting gears to prevent them from physically retracting when the gear level was put into the retracted position.

Investigators later found that the required downlock pin for the nosegear not installed, and was found together with its red warning flag inside a storage box. While the report does not explicitly lay blame, as it is based on interim findings, it’s pretty much easy to figure out that the technicians forgot to inset the pin before the gear level was cycled.  

Of the 28 on board, two suffered serious injuries while 21 others were treated for more minor cuts and bruises.

This incident reminds me somewhat of a similar occurrence in June 2021 involving a British Airways Boeing 787-8. While the aircraft was undergoing a gear diagnostic check, the nose gear also collapsed when the technicians retracted the landing gear on the ground. That case differs slightly as the maintenance official placed the downlock pin into the downlock link assembly apex pin bore, rather than the downlock pin hole.

What’s most interesting about that previous event is that Boeing already addressed the matter prior to this occurring, issuing a Multi-Operator Message (MOM) to warn operators of the potential risk of confusing the apex pin bore and downlock pin hole given its extremely close proximity to one another.

In March 2019, Boeing issued a Service Bulletin, requiring operators to install a specially designed insert inside the apex pin bore to prevent the possibility of technicians confusing the two. In December 2019, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an Airworthiness Directive (AD), making that modification mandatory, with a three-year compliance period beginning January 16, 2020.

In the case of the British Airways aircraft, that particular jet was not brought in yet for the required modification to be made. However, in Lufthansa’s case, techs no longer have the excuse of making that type of mistake as D-ABPQ was delivered new to Lufthansa in 2026, entering service on February 13, 2026. Someone simply forgot the pin outright.

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