CHI97LA301 · Universal D-16
Universal D-16 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Oakland Southwest Airport (Y47) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA301
- 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
Universal D-16
- Aircraft type
- Universal D-16
- 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
- N110N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland Southwest Airport (Y47), NEW HUDSON, MITo 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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, emergency extension assembly › Impeded
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Howell, MI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The instructor pilot had shut down and secured the airplane's left engine as part of a final checkout flight he was giving to a student, prior to her taking her practical test for a multi-engine rating. During the restart attempt, the propeller did not come out of feather, and the engine would not start. The instructor pilot had to manually extend the landing gear, because the hydraulic pump for the gear was on the left engine. They did not get the three green lights, indicating that the airplane's gear was down and locked. The pilot performed a fly-by during which he was informed that the gear appeared to be down. By the time the instructor pilot and student received this information, they were too far down the runway to land, so they executed a go-around. The instructor pilot then took control of the airplane and brought it in for landing. During the touchdown, the landing gear collapsed. Examination of the emergency landing gear extension system revealed that whenever flaps are selected during the hand pumping process, hydraulic pressure to the emergency landing gear system is interrupted, leaving the gear in an intermediate position. Hydraulic pressure is restored once flap extension/retraction is complete.
Probable cause
the emergency landing gear extension system being impeded by flap extension. Factors contributing to this accident are the instructor pilot's intentional feathering of the airplane's left propeller, the instructor pilot's lack of familiarity with the airplane, and insufficient information provided in the pilot's operating handbook warning the operator that extending flaps during emergency gear extension will interrupt hydraulic pressure to the system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA301
- Event ID
- 20001208X08821
- Case number
- CHI97LA301
- 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: 8a607b6f25a5bc296c7b3340651c9ee24bcd29ac5aece6cbb3dd3d31c254223a; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:32:03.411Z.