ATL90IA033 · Boeing 727-225
Boeing 727-225 · Incident: gear not extended during landing
From Albany International Airport (ALB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL90IA033
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Boeing 727-225
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N8835E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, NYTo 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Gear not extended
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Door, landing gear › Undertorqued
- Landing gear, main gear › Jammed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Atlanta, GA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DURING GEAR RETRACTION AFTER TAKEOFF, THE FLIGHT CREW NOTED THAT THE RIGHT MAIN LANDING GEAR (MLG) DOOR WARNING LIGHT REMAINED ILLUMINATED. THE LANDING GEAR WAS CYCLED, BUT THE CONDITION WAS NOT CORRECTED. ATTEMPTS TO EXTEND THE RIGHT MLG WERE UNSUCCESSFUL & THE RIGHT MLG REMAINED PARTIALLY EXTENDED. SUBSEQUENTLY A LANDING WAS MADE WITH THE LEFT MLG AND NOSE GEAR EXTENDED & THE RIGHT MLG PARTIALLY EXTENDED. AFTER LANDING THE ACFT WAS LIFTED FROM THE RWY & THE RIGHT MLG FELL FREELY. THE UPLOCK HOOK WAS FOUND POSITIONED UP. EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT THE DOOR ACTUATOR BOLTS WERE LOOSE & THE SERRATED PLATE HAD BEEN DISPLACED. THE BOLTS SHOULD BE INSTALLED WITH 25-42 FT-LBS TORQUE; INBOARD WAS LOOSENED WITH 10 FT-LBS, TWO OTHERS WERE FINGER TIGHT. ACTUATOR FITTING DISPLACED FULLY OUTBOARD. BOEING SERVICE LETTER 727-SL-32-47 APPLIES.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE MAINTENANCE AND INSPECTION BY THE OPERATOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL90IA033
- Event ID
- 20001213X29737
- Case number
- ATL90IA033
- 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: dcb03da9797a5a45b3c7ea13679aa1303b0d66e58443e66d28ef13a7accd0e7f; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:06:43.122Z.