GAA16CA375 · Cessna A185 F
Cessna A185 F · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Felts Field (SFF) to Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (KCOE)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA375
- 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 A185 F
- 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
- N185TG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Felts Field (SFF), Spokane, WATo Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (KCOE), Coeur d'Alene, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of an amphibious float-equipped airplane reported that he departed from an airport with a paved runway en-route to his destination airport, about 21 nautical miles away, also with a paved runway. While en-route he decided to do a touch and go on a lake about 5 nautical miles from the destination airport. The pilot further reported that during the landing touch down, the airplane immediately nosed over. The pilot reported that he did not visually check the position of the landing gear with the landing gear mirrors before the landing and the landing gear were down for the water landing.
The firewall sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported that he was unsure if there were any mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to retract the amphibious airplane's land-wheels prior to landing on a lake, which resulted in a nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA375
- Event ID
- 20160714X44234
- Case number
- GAA16CA375
- 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: d227808fb4ec8ad40d8eabc65d5b7e405bfdcddcdf2b41ad204693edab437f0e; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:39:32.889Z.