ERA12LA070 · Cessna 172RG
Sun State Aviation Cessna 172RG · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while maneuvering
From Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM) to Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA070
- 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
- N5095V
- Operator
- Sun State Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM), Kissimmee, FLTo Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM), Kissimmee, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
The pilot was not able to obtain a positive gear down-and-locked indication and noticed that the right main landing gear (MLG) only extended about halfway down. After unsuccessful troubleshooting efforts, he performed an emergency gear-up landing, which resulted in substantial damage to the underside of the fuselage. Examination of the landing gear system revealed that the stub shaft of the right MLG pivot assembly was fractured and exhibited characteristics consistent with a torsional fatigue fracture containing multiple origins. Before the accident flight, a company mechanic observed some hydraulic fluid on the MLG leg and assumed that there was a leak from the pivot gear O-rings, which he replaced.
The Federal Aviation Administration previously issued an airworthiness directive (AD), which included an inspection of MLG pivot assemblies for cracks, in accordance with a manufacturer's service bulletin. The AD did not call for repetitive inspections. At the time of the accident, the airplane had been operated for about 7,755 total hours and about 1,800 hours since the time of AD compliance. The airplane service manual contained a supplemental inspection that included initial visual and eddy current inspections of the MLG pivot assembly for cracks in the spline area at 3,000 hours in service with repeated inspections every 500 hours thereafter. The visual and eddy current inspections had not been nor were they required to be performed on the accident airplane.
Probable cause
A fatigue failure of the right main landing gear pivot assembly, which prevented the landing gear from extending.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA070
- Event ID
- 20111114X35910
- Case number
- ERA12LA070
- 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: 6a473e1c98bce52bcd07d01d9a2cd4eea756557caacef28c11984c3eb3059196; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:55:54.107Z.