Ameriflight Fairchild SA227-AC accident
Fairchild SA227-AC · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Lewiston, ID to King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11FA159
- 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
Fairchild SA227-AC
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild SA227
- 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
- N671AV
- Operator
- Ameriflight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lewiston, IDTo King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WA
- 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that following two attempts to land in crosswind conditions, he was cleared to land and was instructed by the air traffic control tower controller to follow another airplane on final approach. For spacing considerations, the controller instructed the pilot to conduct "S" turns behind the traffic landing ahead of him. As the airplane descended to an altitude of about 200 feet above ground level, the controller instructed the pilot to go around and maintain altitude. The pilot executed a go-around procedure, which included retracting the landing gear and reducing the flap setting to one-half flaps. Shortly after, the pilot was issued a clearance to land. The pilot proceeded with the landing clearance and subsequently landed with the gear in the retracted position, which resulted in structural damage to the airframe. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical anomalies or failures with the landing gear or landing gear warning system.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear, which resulted in a gear-up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11FA159
- Event ID
- 20110311X33741
- Case number
- WPR11FA159
- 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 2011-03-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 978340fadbdc1eda6987989e2668b6398ccf4bd1b5ddfae9ce5116d12b7b995e; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:54:03.164Z.