GAA16CA527 · Swearingen SA226 T(B)
Ponderosa Air Swearingen SA226 T(B) · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Westchester County Airport (HPN) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA527
- 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
Swearingen SA226 T(B)
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- 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
- N127WD
- Operator
- Ponderosa Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westchester County Airport (HPN), Westchester, NYTo Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NY
- 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 · 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
According to the pilot in command (PIC), he was conducting an instructional flight for his "new SIC (second in command)," who was seated in the left seat. He reported that they had flown two previous legs in the retractable landing gear-equipped airplane. He recalled that, during the approach, they discussed the events of their previous flights and had complied with the airport control tower's request to "keep our speed up." During the approach, he called for full flaps and retarded the throttle to flight idle. The PIC asserted that there was no indication that the landing gear was not extended because he did not hear a landing gear warning horn; however, he was wearing a noise-cancelling headset. He added that the landing gear position lights were not visible because the SIC's knee obstructed his view of the lights. He recalled that, following the flare, he heard the propellers hit the runway and that he made the decision not to go around because of unknown damage sustained to the propellers. The airplane touched down and slid to a stop on the runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage bulkheads, longerons, and stringers.
The SIC reported that the flight was a training flight in visual flight rules conditions. He noted that the airspace was busy and that, during the approach, he applied full flaps, but they failed to extend the landing gear. He added that he did not hear the landing gear warning horn; however, he was wearing a noise-cancelling headset.
The Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Safety Inspector that examined the wreckage reported that, during recovery, the pilot extended the nose landing gear via the normal extension process. However, due to significant damage to the main landing gear (MLG) doors, the MLG was unable to be extended hydraulically or manually. He added that an operational check of the landing gear warning horn was not accomplished because the wreckage was unsafe to enter after it was removed from the runway.
The landing gear warning horn was presented by an aural tone in the cockpit and was not configured to be heard through the pilots' noise-cancelling headsets.
When asked, the PIC and the SIC both stated that they could not remember who read the airplane flight manual Before Landing checklist.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command’s failure to extend the landing gear before landing and his failure to use the Before Landing checklist. Contributing to the accident was the pilots’ failure to maintain a sterile cockpit during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA527
- Event ID
- 20161115X51413
- Case number
- GAA16CA527
- 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: fc4e2c8e6d884990be7c29ad893d75e10e627f5790b0fa17235ee8e93fea6ee5; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:50:07.247Z.