CEN16LA153 · Gill Craig LANCAIR IV P PROPJET
Gill Craig LANCAIR IV P PROPJET · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU) to Addison Airport (ADS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA153
- 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
Gill Craig LANCAIR IV P PROPJET
- Aircraft type
- Gill Craig LANCAIR IV P PROPJET
- 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
- N992BC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU), Georgetown, TXTo Addison Airport (ADS), Addison, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that, on his initial approach for landing in the experimental, amateur-built, turboprop-equipped airplane, a gust of wind caused the airplane to "balloon" and that he elected to execute a go-around. On the second approach, the airplane touched down "just left" of the runway centerline. However, when the pilot placed the propeller into beta, the nose landing gear collapsed. He was unable to maintain directional control, and the airplane subsequently departed the right side of the runway. He "felt a loud bang" after the airplane exited the runway pavement.
Video footage depicted that the airplane initially touched down on the right main landing gear, followed by the left main landing gear. The right main wheel appeared to leave the pavement momentarily before settling back down. Shortly afterward, the nose landing gear collapsed. The airplane subsequently veered to the right and departed the runway pavement. The airplane continued to travel through the grass area adjacent to the runway and rotated abruptly to the right immediately before coming to rest.
A postaccident examination of the airplane landing gear system did not identify any anomalies consistent with a preimpact failure or malfunction. The nose landing gear strut, wheel assembly, support structure, and extension/retraction linkage appeared to be intact. In the absence of any confirmed failures related to the nose landing gear installation, the cause for the nose landing gear collapse could not be determined.
Probable cause
Collapse of the nose landing gear during landing for reasons that could not be determined, because postaccident examination did not detect any anomalies consistent with a preimpact failure or malfunction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA153
- Event ID
- 20160418X14053
- Case number
- CEN16LA153
- 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: 323e69ea551a213aaa5a1b081ed6d6027889350272050e1524c5c18943fcbe94; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:18:18.260Z.