CEN09LA415 · Cessna 441
Air Evac Services Cessna 441 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From Double Eagle II Airport (KAEG) to Albuquerque International Sunport (KABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA415
- 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
- Not recorded
Cessna 441
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 441
- 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
- N988AE
- Operator
- Air Evac Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Double Eagle II Airport (KAEG), Albuquerque, NMTo Albuquerque International Sunport (KABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on final approach to the intended destination airport, the landing gear was selected and the landing gear circuit breaker popped. After initial troubleshooting of the system, the pilot initiated the "Landing Gear Will Not Extend Normally" checklist. The pilot activated the nitrogen blowdown bottle, but the landing gear did not extend. The pilot elected to land gear up utilizing a longer runway at an alternate airport. During the flare, the pilot shut off both engines, and the airplane settled on to the runway. An examination of the landing gear system found that a fitting had separated on the blowdown bottle system resulting in a failure of the emergency extension system. In addition, the airplane's operator discovered a faulty landing gear selector switch.
Probable cause
A malfunction of the landing gear selector switch and a loose fitting on the emergency extension system which rendered the landing gear system inoperable.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA415
- Event ID
- 20090707X15408
- Case number
- CEN09LA415
- 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, 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: 4c718e5ae2b6747822f9b388a5573aef9e3c237fbc152c2b7c7c72688b05bc56; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:42:54.143Z.