NYC97LA047 · Cessna 650
Cessna 650 · Accident: gear collapsed during landing
From Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (AVP)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA047
- 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 650
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 650
- 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
- N777LF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington, DCTo Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (AVP)
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Landing gear, gear locking mechanism › Malfunction
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Cessna Citation III had completed a passenger pickup and was on the return leg to the departure airport. The airplane was established on the ILS approach to runway 04, and the pilot held about a 20 degree right wind drift correction to maintain the airplane on the localizer course. The landing checks were completed and three green landing gear indicator lights were observed. The airplane touched down in the first 1,000 feet of the runway, bounced, and touched down about 300 to 400 feet further down the runway. About 500 feet after the second touchdown, the left landing gear collapsed, and the airplane was stopped on the runway. Examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact failures. Examination of the main landing gear actuator revealed the end of the piston was severed at the rod end attachment point and bent at an angle of approximately 20 degrees. The airplane's maximum demonstrated landing crosswind component was 25 knots. Winds reported at the airport were from 120 degrees at 25 knots. The pilot's total accumulated flight experience was 7,120 hours, with 52 hours in make and model, of which 3 hours were in the preceding 30 days.
Probable cause
The collapse of the left main landing gear as a result of the malfunction of the downlock actuator for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA047
- Event ID
- 20001208X07352
- Case number
- NYC97LA047
- 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: 0929229173df36ef811c5a85e44717630178df2ab707479009193d766bd80771; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:26:52.976Z.