DEN03LA156 · Cessna R182
Cessna R182 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA156
- 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 R182
- 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
- N6078C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC), Cedar City, UTTo 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 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
- 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
- Landing gear, nose gear › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot took off and attempted to raise the landing gear. He did not hear the gear motor operate. He noted that the main landing gear were still down, and the nose gear was partially retracted. The pilot reported that he recycled the gear several times eventually leaving it down. The pilot said he had cockpit indications that the gear was safe; however, the pilot asked a crash crew at the airport to look at the gear as he flew over. The pilot reported that the crash crew informed him that all three gear were down. The pilot came in for landing. On touching the nose wheel to the runway, the nose wheel came off. The nose gear strut dug into the runway asphalt and subsequently collapsed. An examination of the airplane's nose gear showed the nose gear axle through bolt had a vacant pinhole for a cotter key at the end of the bolt threads. The end nut for the bolt was missing and not found at the accident site. An examination of the engine, engine controls and other airplane systems showed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the nose wheel separating from the airplane during the precautionary landing. Factors contributing to the accident were the missing nose gear axle through-bolt and the missing cotter pin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA156
- Event ID
- 20031001X01641
- Case number
- DEN03LA156
- 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, coordinates. 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: 568620a1998352d13d0b468d13b372b30f17576be68d454f9749641863bf554d; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:27:58.533Z.