LAX06LA101 · Cessna R182
Sawyer Aviation Cessna R182 · Accident: gear collapsed while taxiing
From Scottsdale Airport (SDL) to Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06LA101
- 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
- N88AA
- Operator
- Sawyer Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scottsdale Airport (SDL), Scottsdale, AZTo Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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 collapsed
- 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 attach point › Failure, total
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 was substantially damaged when the nose wheel collapsed while turning off the runway after landing. The pilot stated that that he verified that the green light was illuminated on the gear indicator, showing that all three landing gear were down and locked, then he made a normal landing. The pilot was taxiing off the runway after landing when the nose gear collapsed. The pilot further stated that he performed a normal touchdown and did not hit the runway excessively hard. An inspection by an Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Safety Inspector revealed that the nose gear collapsed as a result of sheared rivets that attach the bracket assembly for the nose gear hydraulic actuator. Smearing on the rivet shanks indicated a loading directionality from aft to forward, which is the direction of normal retraction for the nose gear. No other damage was noted to the firewall or other airframe structures consistent with a hard landing. The inspector opined that the evidence was not conclusive that the sheared rivets occurred on the accident landing, and may in fact represent damage resulting from prior ground handling (towing) operations.
Probable cause
overload of the nose landing gear actuator attach bracket resulting in collapse of the nose gear while taxiing. It is undetermined when and under what circumstances the overload occurred.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06LA101
- Event ID
- 20060307X00275
- Case number
- LAX06LA101
- 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: c68dd5875fd311d4e103110a063baa917460d094adc0cac593bd5b821861ccdc; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:07:31.178Z.