Airvantage Swearingen SA226TC accident
Swearingen SA226TC · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP) to Hector International Airport (FAR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA162
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Swearingen SA226TC
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N229AM
- Operator
- Airvantage
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP), Minneapolis, MNTo Hector International Airport (FAR), ND
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · landing roll
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Nose gear collapsed
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Gear down and locked, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on short final to land, the pilot-in-command landed with the nose landing gear still in the uplocked position. The maintenance logbook indicates several undetermined nose gear uplock conditions that the flight crews had to lower the nose gear by free falling it. All flights were uneventful up until this flight. A transcript of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), indicated that the before landing checklist was not completed correctly. The landing gear challenge and reply checklist was recorded as saying landing gear coming down, with a horn beeping in the background. The Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH) says, landing gear--down, with no report of three green down and locked lights.
Probable cause
the flight crew did not comply with the gear down and lock checklist. The factors were a jammed nose gear and inattentive preflight planning/preparations by the pilot-in-command.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA162
- Event ID
- 20001208X05723
- Case number
- CHI96LA162
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c46f771478914ca1b3ddc79226f556752e1a9e18a1e01f4ba38af02790bd6388; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:51:03.418Z.