MIA99LA270 · Cessna 172RG
Orlando Aero Club Cessna 172RG · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE) to Orlando Executive Airport (ORL)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA270
- 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
- N9536B
- Operator
- Orlando Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), St. Petersburg, FLTo Orlando Executive Airport (ORL)
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Gear down and locked, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that after leaving St. Petersburg, he experienced radio problems and the alternator tripped off line. The instructor said he could not reset it, so he turned the master switch off, and continued the flight. Prior to landing, the instructor said that he turned on the master switch, extended the landing gear, visibly checked that the left gear was down, but did not get a gear light. During landing, the instructor said the right main gear settled to the runway and gave way, with the airplane exiting the runway. The instructor said that he never attempted to manually pump the gear down. The FAA inspector who conducted the post crash examination of the airplane said that he found the airplane with the left main gear extended and locked, the nose wheel sheared off, and the right gear collapsed into the gear well. The inspector also stated that witnesses told him that they saw the right main gear trailing prior to landing. The inspector stated that the aircraft battery was almost depleted of electrical energy, and the low voltage warning light was on. According to the inspector, thirty degrees of flaps was selected, but the flaps were extended about 10 to 15 degrees, and the manual extension pump for the landing gear was stowed, with no evidence of recent use. The inspector said that after supporting the aircraft and starting the engine, no electrical problems were found.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to ensure that the landing gear was down and locked following loss of electrical power for undetermined reasons, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane when the right main landing gear collapsed upon landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA270
- Event ID
- 20001212X19840
- Case number
- MIA99LA270
- 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: 87facc8e35942cb19cfd4e0c582beaa1159a8854a99db086cbdefe73a7ef8dd2; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:01:32.684Z.