ERA13CA207 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J) to Beaufort Executive Airport (ARW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA207
- 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 A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N812F
- Operator
- Lindsay A. Weaver · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J), Palatka, FLTo Beaufort Executive Airport (ARW), Beaufort, SC
- 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 · 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was performing a water touch-and-go landing on a river, about 3 miles from the departure airport. He also reported that he was distracted by potential skydivers, towers in the area, and by his passenger as they discussed the route of flight. He did not retract the landing gear after he took off and he landed the amphibious airplane on the water with the wheels extended. The airplane immediately nosed over and came to rest inverted in the water. The pilot reported that the fuselage and wings sustained structural damage. He did not report any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to retract the landing gear after takeoff from a runway, and his subsequent water landing with the wheels extended.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA207
- Event ID
- 20130418X35304
- Case number
- ERA13CA207
- 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: 7d4f97df6fdd1ce3291833f25bca5009c313ca9696613bb1ea7116731c1422cb; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:19:54.081Z.