NYC08LA204 · Cessna 421C
Cessna 421C · Accident: landing gear collapse during takeoff
From Pitt-Greenville Airport (PGV) to Wilmington International Airport (ILM)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA204
- 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 421C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N49DD
- Operator
- Taft, Taft, and Haigler
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pitt-Greenville Airport (PGV), Greenville, NCTo Wilmington International Airport (ILM), Wilmington, NC
- 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
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident pilot was preparing to fly the airplane back to its home base. When he taxied the airplane for departure the "Hydraulic Flow" light remained illuminated at a "higher than normal" engine rpm. He then taxied the airplane back to the ramp in order to have a mechanic investigate the cause for the light. The mechanic informed the pilot that it was "probably a sensor problem" and that the airplane should be safe to fly. The pilot then taxied back to runway 2 for departure. During the takeoff roll, at a speed of about 90 knots, the pilot heard a loud "bang." The airplane settled onto the runway, slid on the underside of the fuselage, and stopped on the right edge of the runway pavement. The damage was limited to the propeller tips, skin on the underside of the fuselage, and a penetration of the pressure vessel on the right side of the fuselage near the right cockpit seat. The airplane was loaded onto a trailer, and moved to another location on the airport for further examination. When the airplane was lifted from the trailer, the landing gear was manually extended and secured. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector and a local mechanic revealed no preimpact deficiencies with the landing gear and the associated systems. The installation and functionality of the landing gear torque link safety switch was found to be in accordance with the manufacturer's guidance.
Probable cause
The malfunction and premature retraction of the landing gear for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA204
- Event ID
- 20080613X00852
- Case number
- NYC08LA204
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: a79cf09ab983ba1c4ecb89cdbc55b5dab62b364df22bca71ffa0d83a4f209191; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:46:01.840Z.