DEN08LA159 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS) to Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA159
- 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 172RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N6416V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), St. Louis, MOTo Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), St. Louis, MO
- 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
- 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 not configured
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he had just departed when he noted that he had a "landing gear problem." After multiple attempts to extend the landing gear, the pilot performed a gear up landing, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. Examination revealed that the nose gear door was jammed and had prevented the nose landing gear from extending. An examination of the maintenance records revealed that the day prior to the accident, the airplane was in for maintenance directly related to the landing gear door and damage to the door lip. The mechanic performed two gear swings without issue and the airplane was returned to service with the intent to repair the gear door damage when the airplane was in for an annual inspection in October.
Probable cause
The improper maintenance performed resulting in a jammed nose landing gear door preventing the extension of the nose landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA159
- Event ID
- 20081003X16581
- Case number
- DEN08LA159
- 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: 4f241c387583327f8510a52398e6f17558a4aaaa01efc6d8528fe2a5e3eaa125; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:16:40.560Z.