Capital Aviation Cessna 402A accident
Cessna 402A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Hector International Airport (FAR) to Monterey, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN82DA079
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 402A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N4504Q
- Operator
- Capital Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hector International Airport (FAR), Fargo, NDTo Monterey, CA
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Landing gear, emergency extension assembly › Jammed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bismarck, ND, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT DISCOVERED THAT THE GEAR WOULD NOT EXTEND ELECTRICALLY. MANUAL EXTENSION WAS ATTEMPTED, BUT THE CRANK WOULD NOT TURN IN EITHER DIRECTION. WHILE APPLYING PRESSURE TO THE CRANKS, THE CHAIN DRIVE FAILED. THE PLANE WAS LANDED WITH THE GEAR RETRACTED. DISASSEMBLY OF THE EMERGENCY EXTENSION SYSTEM REVEALED THAT A SHAFT, PN 0843400-50, WAS BENT AND GOUGE MARKS WERE FOUND ON A TOOTH OF A BEVEL GEAR, PN 0843400-49. ALSO, THE MANUAL EXTENSION CHAIN, PN 500000-52, BETWEEN THE HAND CRANK AND BEVEL GEARS, HAD BROKEN. NO OTHER DISCREPANCIES WERE EVIDENT IN THE LANDING GEAR SYSTEM.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN82DA079
- Event ID
- 20020917X03112
- Case number
- DEN82DA079
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1982-05-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 54963a86b3d7cde0fc6442f43317d4afbbcb23d6f605814b2dd620228667215c; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:10:22.061Z.