WPR13LA102 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From KBND · Bend, OH to Roberts Field (RDM)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA102
- 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
- N6290V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From KBND · Bend, OHTo Roberts Field (RDM), Redmond, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 33 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the landing approach, the flight instructor and pilot undergoing instruction were unable to fully extend or retract the left main landing gear and, after multiple unsuccessful troubleshooting attempts, performed a gear-up landing. Postaccident examination revealed that the pivot assembly for the left main landing gear actuator had fractured and had separation features consistent with torsional fatigue. The Federal Aviation Administration previously issued an airworthiness directive (AD), which included an inspection of pivot assemblies for cracks, in accordance with a manufacturer's service bulletin (SB). The AD called for repetitive inspections of the pivot assembly if the airplane experienced a hard landing, and the SB recommended, in small print, full recompliance after a hard landing. The SB was complied with 12 years and 2,730 flight hours before the accident. The airplane was subsequently involved in a hard landing, and a reinspection was conducted; however, recompliance with the entire SB was not achieved as recommended in the SB, and the pivot failed 894 flight hours after the hard landing.
Probable cause
Failure of the left main landing gear pivot assembly during the landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA102
- Event ID
- 20130125X11450
- Case number
- WPR13LA102
- 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 2013-01-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 16515b137939c0a774c7dd2f4c659be7bde36577127123f403d77be0965a5d3f; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:49:24.314Z.