WPR09LA083 · Cessna 172RG
National Pilot Academy Cessna 172RG · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From Carson Airport (CXP) to Carson Airport (CXP)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA083
- 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
- N6272R
- Operator
- National Pilot Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carson Airport (CXP), Carson City, NVTo Carson Airport (CXP), Carson City, NV
- 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 · VFR pattern crosswind
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the landing approach the pilot was unable to fully extend the right main landing gear. Following multiple troubleshooting attempts he retracted the left and nose landing gear and performed a partial gear-up landing. During the landing sequence the airplane sustained substantial damage to the belly structure. Postaccident examination revealed multiple fractures in the right main landing gear actuator housing and mechanical damage to the internal piston rack. Analysis of the fractures revealed that they had failed in overload. Examination of an exemplar actuator, piston, and sector gear revealed that the mechanical damage to the teeth on the sector gear occurred after the initial failure of the actuator housing and was not causal to the failure. The airplane manufacturer had released a service bulletin addressing repeated inspections for cracks at a specific location in the actuator body, a typical procedure for monitoring of fatigue cracks. Although it appeared that the operator had not complied with the service bulletin, the primary cracks were in a different location and displayed features consistent with an overload event. Although the airplane had been used for flight training, and the overload failure of the actuator was likely caused by a prior hard landing, the investigation was unable to determine the initiating event.
Probable cause
The overload failure of the landing gear actuator at an undetermined time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA083
- Event ID
- 20090115X05748
- Case number
- WPR09LA083
- 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: 67dcd23435e237b20989b34be1c06066b0f3ff99cbb97fdd8ba37de4d6472f96; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:41:32.061Z.