SEA96LA126 · Price BERKUT
Price BERKUT · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Sioux Gateway Airport / Brigadier General Bud Day Field (SUX) to Jackson Hole Airport (JAC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA126
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Price BERKUT
- Aircraft type
- Price BERKUT
- 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
- N538AJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sioux Gateway Airport / Brigadier General Bud Day Field (SUX), Sioux City, IATo Jackson Hole Airport (JAC)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Hydraulic system, pump › Failure
- Landing gear, main gear spring › Not installed
- Owner/builder › Maintenance, installation, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the pilot approached his destination, the landing gear 'transition' light illuminated indicating operation of the hydraulic pump, although the landing gear was still retracted. When the pilot lowered the landing gear, they failed to extend. He then manually lowered the gear, but was unable to obtain green 'down and locked' indicator lights for the main gear. During the landing, the main gear collapsed, and the aircraft impacted several runway lights. Postcrash examination revealed that the electrically driven hydraulic pump had burned out. Additionally, the over-center downlock springs, which were to assist in manually locking the gear into a down-and-locked condition during manual extension, had never been installed by the builder/previous owner.
Probable cause
failure of the electrically driven hydraulic pump; and the absence of the main landing gear over-center downlock springs, which were not installed by the previous owner/builder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA126
- Event ID
- 20001208X06121
- Case number
- SEA96LA126
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-06-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5105e03315b09be069598a2dfe9486dce5527214940619b29427ccdb5c3312fd; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:11:46.681Z.