ERA11LA231 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: landing gear collapse
From La Belle Municipal Airport (X14) to Okeechobee County Airport (OBE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA231
- 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
- N5284V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Belle Municipal Airport (X14), La Belle, FLTo Okeechobee County Airport (OBE), Okeechobee, FL
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 collapse
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, he and the pilot-rated student entered the left downwind leg of the traffic pattern to land. The flight instructor read the before-landing checklist, and the pilot-rated student extended the landing gear. The flight instructor put his hand on the landing gear handle to verify that the landing gear was down because he could not see the green light from where he was sitting. According to the pilot-rated student, he extended the landing gear on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, saw the green landing gear indicator light, and felt the vibrations and heard the sounds associated with the landing gear extension. They continued onto the base and final leg of the traffic pattern and landed the airplane. The pilots described what initially felt like a normal landing roll but then the main landing gear collapsed and the airplane's empennage began scraping the runway. The airplane came to rest on the left side of the runway centerline.
A postaccident examination revealed that the main landing gear had collapsed while the nose gear remained locked in the down position. A postaccident examination of the runway revealed tire marks that were about 5 to 6 feet apart, narrowing to 2 to 3 feet apart leading to the airplane. According to guidance provided by the manufacturer, the distance between the two main landing gear tires with the gear fully extended was 8 feet and 6 inches, indicating that the landing gear was likely not fully deployed at touchdown. A postaccident examination of the landing gear system was performed, and the landing gear, power pack, and emergency landing gear extension, were operated several times. The examination noted no grinding noise and no anomalies with the main landing gear’s operation. Further examination revealed that the landing gear warning horn did not operate, but the landing gear indicator light operated correctly. Although the landing gear indicator light is slightly obscured from the right seat, a slight left head movement while seated would allow the light to be clearly visible from the right seat. Additionally, the before-landing checklist calls for visual verification that the associated gear is down and locked through each pilot’s side window.
Probable cause
The failure of the main landing gear to lock in the extended position for undetermined reasons and both pilots’ failure to ensure that the landing gear was down and locked prior to landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA231
- Event ID
- 20110408X35239
- Case number
- ERA11LA231
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-04-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 37f285e1abe85bf2762d9a5dfd3b1a68a77a8c236cd7aeb4cafea6eff892cd80; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:01:44.905Z.