WPR16LA163 · Cessna TR182
Pacific Skies Aviation Cessna TR182 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Zamperini Field (TOA) to Zamperini Field (TOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16LA163
- 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 TR182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N756FZ
- Operator
- Pacific Skies Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zamperini Field (TOA), Torrance, CATo Zamperini Field (TOA), Torrance, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1979)
- 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 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
During an instructional flight, the flight instructor was demonstrating a normal landing to the pilot under instruction. As the airplane approached the runway, the instructor selected the landing gear down and configured the airplane for the landing. The landing checks were called out, and a landing gear green indictor light was verified, indicating that the landing gear should have been down and locked. The landing flare and initial touchdown were normal. However, shortly after the airplane touched down, it listed right as the right main landing gear (MLG) collapsed. The airplane then entered a 180o skidding turn before coming to a stop. Two witnesses reported seeing the airplane on final approach with its right MLG not fully extended.
During a postaccident examination, the airplane was placed on jacks to facilitate a gear-swing test. The MLG were cycled multiple times with no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Each time the MLG were extended, the landing gear indicator lights inside the cockpit illuminated. The reason for the right MLG's failure to fully extend when the MLG were selected down could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the right main landing gear to fully extend for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination and testing did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16LA163
- Event ID
- 20160810X23719
- Case number
- WPR16LA163
- 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: f10c7f73dd3f3cbd2d494bf92b496fa197ca9538edc5a601f9a72b38db8414b8; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:08:39.435Z.