CHI07LA011 · Cessna R182
Cessna R182 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Ames Municipal Airport (AMW) to Ames Municipal Airport (AMW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA011
- 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
- N5274S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ames Municipal Airport (AMW), Ames, IATo Ames Municipal Airport (AMW)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, not possible
- Landing gear, gear locking mechanism › Fatigue
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 operated as an instructional airplane when the nose landing gear collapsed during landing. The flight instructor stated that he and the dual student did not receive "a green light indicating gear down and locked" when landing. They reported cycling the landing gear several times but could not get a down and locked indication. Examination of the landing gear revealed that the two nose gear down lock actuator pins exhibited fatigue fracture over 70 percent of the fracture surface. Cessna service bulletin SEB95-20, recommends a reoccurring 200-hour inspection of the down lock pins for looseness. If looseness or movement is observed, Service kit SK210-155 is to be installed prior to further flight. The service bulletin does not provide for the visual inspection of the pins for fatigue cracks The pins were of the older design, and were reportedly inspected and no looseness was observed. Following the accident, the operator reported that one of the fractured pins was still not loose until he exerted a greater amount of force to check for looseness.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the landing gear actuator pin and the exterior visual maintenance inspection for cracks not possible by company maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA011
- Event ID
- 20061109X01629
- Case number
- CHI07LA011
- 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: 74994fc7ecedc7bbe06f633dc64138f45b32c199c20c93c316772050af8f0fa8; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:17:55.141Z.