LAX98LA065 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: wheels up landing
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA065
- 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 172RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N5404V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY)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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Wheels up landing
- 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, circuit breaker › Popped/tripped
- Flightcrew › Gear extension, not verified
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that the student pilot had extended the landing gear on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, but then retracted it after being told to go around by the control tower. On the second downwind leg, the student again placed the gear switch in the down position; however, neither the student nor the instructor visually verified that the gear was down and locked. During the final flare for landing, the instructor noted that the gear was not down and that the 5 amp gear warning circuit breaker had opened. He then closed the circuit breaker and noted the gear starting to extend, but it had achieved only an intermediate position at the time of touchdown. The airplane subsequently settled on to the runway and incurred damage to the underside, the right wing, and the right horizontal stabilizer. A review of the Cessna 172RG Service Manual, Drawing No. 2471000, 'Wiring Diagram-Landing Gear System' indicated that subject circuit breaker, in addition to providing power to the gear indicator lights and warning horn, also powers the main gear downlock switches and the stall warning horn.
Probable cause
The student and flight instructor's failure to verify that the landing gear was in the down position, and the design of the electrical system in which a single-point aircraft system malfunction (one open circuit breaker) disabled both the landing gear warning system and the main gear downlock switches.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA065
- Event ID
- 20001208X09339
- Case number
- LAX98LA065
- 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: 924b80cafaa55164f5607a30a5f22fcf3468236d452f92a200d42e220ad48d0f; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:07:54.003Z.