LAX00TA051 · de Havilland DHC-7
Raytheon Systems Engr'G de Havilland DHC-7 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Bucholz Army Air Field (PKWA) to Dyess Army Air Field (PKRO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00TA051
- 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
de Havilland DHC-7
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-7
- 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
- N273EP
- Operator
- Raytheon Systems Engr'G
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bucholz Army Air Field (PKWA)To Dyess Army Air Field (PKRO), ROI-NAMUR
- 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
- Flightcrew › Emergency procedure, not performed
- Flightcrew › Gear extension, improper
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
Approaching the destination, when the landing gear was lowered, the nose gear indicated unsafe and, without landing, the flight returned to the point of departure. The pilot-in-command viewed the nose gear alignment marks in the nose gear inspection window and believed the nose gear was down and locked, and that the gear unsafe light was an erroneous indication. During the landing rollout, the nose landing gear slowly collapsed as the weight of the aircraft settled on the nose. Investigation by the operator revealed a failure at the boss end of the nose gear extend actuator. The operator also determined that the flight crew did not accomplish the emergency gear extension procedure as specified in the Airplane Flight Manual. During recovery of the aircraft from the runway, operation of the emergency gear extension hand pump lowered and locked the nose gear in 8 strokes of the pump.
Probable cause
The failure of the flight crew to properly execute the emergency landing gear extension procedure in response to a landing gear unsafe cockpit indication.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00TA051
- Event ID
- 20001212X20132
- Case number
- LAX00TA051
- 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: ad360eace7acae1cd271a494a4051f611cd09314db42ff6b927373cbbcef1c5f; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:37:44.808Z.