CEN10LA128 · Cessna 172RG
Mach II Aviation Services Cessna 172RG · Accident: landing gear not configured
From New Braunfels National Airport (BAZ) to Lockhart Municipal Airport (50R)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA128
- 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
- N5404V
- Operator
- Mach II Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Braunfels National Airport (BAZ), New Braunfels, TXTo Lockhart Municipal Airport (50R), Lockhart, TX
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that after departure during an instructional flight, the landing gear was slow to retract, the radios made “clicking noises,” “flickered” and began to fail, and the fuel gauges registered near empty. The flight instructor assumed control of the airplane. During the landing approach, he attempted to lower the flaps, but there was no response. He instructed the student pilot to lower the landing gear. He said there was no warning horn or annunciator light to indicate that the gear was either up or down. He did not say whether he or the student pilot looked outside to see if the landing gear appeared to be down and locked. The airplane landed with the gear partially extended and veered off the right side of the runway into the grass. The outboard portion of the right wing and the right horizontal stabilizer and elevator were bent. The airplane was later ferried to a repair facility. According to the ferry pilot, he recharged the battery and flew uneventfully to the repair facility. The repair facility reported finding no anomalies with the airplane’s electrical system.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to use the emergency checklist, and his failure to extend the landing gear manually. Contributing to the accident was the electrical failure/malfunction for reasons undetermined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA128
- Event ID
- 20100225X05017
- Case number
- CEN10LA128
- 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: 25817e7e7cf036b0ce708ae604144e0a52c76686def373ea979b2b189e45c162; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:42:20.901Z.