ATL97LA006 · Cessna 337G
Cessna 337G · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA006
- 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
Cessna 337G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N20EC
- Operator
- Rodney K Flack · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY)To not recorded
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Electrical system, electric switch › Improper
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Inoperative
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, modification, not approved
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon entering the traffic pattern for a full stop landing at the original destination airport, the pilot placed the landing gear extension handle in the down position, and discovered that the landing gear would not extend. The pilot flew to Fayetteville and conducted several over-flights for the control tower to check the aircraft for the landing gear extension. After three hours of flight, the pilot shut down the front engine and landed the airplane with the rear engine running. An examination of the aircraft revealed that an unauthorized on/off switch had been installed under the instrument panel for the landing gear system. According to the pilot, when the switch was placed in the on position, the landing gear would retract but would not extend. There were no write-ups in the aircraft maintenance logs or the aircraft checklist that revealed the installation of this switch. Neither the pilot nor the new owner of the airplane were aware of the unauthorized switch installation.
Probable cause
The unapproved maintenance modification of the landing gear electrical system by maintenance personnel that prevented the extension of the landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA006
- Event ID
- 20001208X06837
- Case number
- ATL97LA006
- 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: e936966e2e009aa488e975ac85ee7a20d93bbfde94fc6f2f5de307c6031756a2; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:57:13.171Z.