Key Lime Air Cessna 404 accident
Cessna 404 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA343
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 404
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 404
- 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
- N37127
- Operator
- Key Lime Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Luis Valley Regional Airport/Bergman Field (ALS), Alamosa, COTo Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, CO
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- En route
- 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
While en route, the left and right hydraulic system failure lights illuminated. The pilot diverted to an alternate airport. The pilot was unable to extend the landing gear using the normal system. The pilot tried the emergency system but the gear still would not extend. The pilot was forced to land wheels up after diverting to an alternate airport. The airplane's keel sustained substantial damaged during the landing. An examination of the airplane showed a hydraulic line had failed downstream of the left and right hydraulic pumps and the emergency landing gear extension air bottle, making gear extension impossible.
Probable cause
The failure of the landing gear to extend due to the failure of a hydraulic line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA343
- Event ID
- 20090608X70545
- Case number
- CEN09CA343
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-06-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0d745b8c855417b7e96c7358b08efafcf5483b32d9ae9107969061fb561f2c01; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:20:15.476Z.