WPR12LA383 · Cessna 177RG
Cessna 177RG · Accident during landing
From Chehalis Centralia Airport (CLS) to Olympia Regional Airport (OLM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA383
- 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 177RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 177
- 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
- N300ZX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chehalis Centralia Airport (CLS), Chehalis, WATo Olympia Regional Airport (OLM), Olympia, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner of the retractable-gear airplane was completing a personal flight from a nearby airport back to his home airport. About 150 feet beyond the touchdown point, the airplane began veering to the right. The pilot was unable to correct the veer, and the airplane skidded off the right side of the runway into the adjacent grass and dirt. The airplane came to rest upright on its belly, adjacent to the side of the runway, and facing in about the opposite direction of landing. The two main landing gear assemblies were collapsed aft, essentially into their near-retracted positions. The nose gear remained partially attached to the airplane and was overextended forward to a near-horizontal orientation. Much of the physical evidence that was obtained was consistent with the collapse or retraction of both main landing gear just after landing.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right main landing gear downlock mechanism functioned normally, but a slight anomaly with the left main landing gear downlock mechanism was observed. Because neither the pilot nor the air traffic controller reported a gear collapse, and the physical evidence was inconsistent with a left gear only collapse, a failure of that downlock was excluded as the cause of the right veer. An NTSB metallurgical examination indicated that the fractured nose landing gear components all failed due to tensile overload. Further examination of the nose gear components did not reveal any preaccident mechanical deficiencies or failures that would have resulted in a steering malfunction.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control during landing for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the nose gear steering mechanism did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA383
- Event ID
- 20120901X25234
- Case number
- WPR12LA383
- 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: e4ae849941723c2c823f6d8650ab1b110ccd904cc5c18d700b77806369404a6f; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:38:01.271Z.