LAX02LA236 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: wheels up landing
From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT) to Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA236
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 TR182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N756EV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Yosemite International Airport (FAT), Fresno, CATo Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM), Yuma, AZ
- 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
- Pilot in command › Gear down and locked, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane landed with the gear partially extended during a night landing. The pilot stated that he often dims all of the panel lights during night flights in an effort to improve his night vision. While attempting to illuminate the landing gear indicator light, by turning the knob counterclockwise, he had accidentally depressed the "press and test" indicator knob, giving him a false indication that the gear was in the down and locked position. Mechanics examined the airplane after the accident and noted that the circuit breaker for the landing gear had popped out. After resetting the circuit breaker, they put the airplane on jacks and cycled the landing gear. They found no anomalies or mechanical malfunctions with the landing gear.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to properly verify that the landing gear was in the down and locked position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA236
- Event ID
- 20020730X01254
- Case number
- LAX02LA236
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-07-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9c2295a0e00bf8814126e89f3ea47823758892d629e8e1793c8e9c02810a690b; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:42:02.951Z.