CEN15LA309 · Cessna 172RG
Cessna 172RG · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during takeoff
From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE) to Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA309
- 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
- N6511V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Minneapolis, MNTo Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Minneapolis, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 35 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- 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 flight instructor and commercial-rated pilot receiving instruction departed the airport. When the commercial pilot retracted the landing gear, the pilots both heard a loud "clang" from the vicinity of the left main landing gear. The pilots lowered the landing gear; the right main gear extended but the left main gear did not extend. The pilots recycled the landing gear and then attempted the emergency gear extension procedure, which were both unsuccessful in lowering the left main gear. The pilots flew to the airport and the tower controller reported that the gear was partially extended. The instructor then attempted several maneuvers to get the gear to go down and lock, but these had no effect. When the pilots determined that they would not be able to lower the left main landing gear, the flight instructor performed an intentional gear-up landing. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed a fractured left main landing gear actuator. Numerous attempts to obtain the broken actuator from the operator were unsuccessful, and a detailed examination of the actuator was not possible.
Probable cause
Failure of the left landing gear actuator for reasons that could not be determined because the actuator was not made available for examination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA309
- Event ID
- 20150721X83402
- Case number
- CEN15LA309
- 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: 31c33a27d311f1df414fd2058d7726465810b55ceb1c664ccddb9095eb0e5dac; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:33:21.668Z.