Air Flight Cessna 402 C accident
Cessna 402 C · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Andros Town Airport (MYAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA209
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 402 C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N322HA
- Operator
- Air Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Andros Town Airport (MYAF), Fresh Creek
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1981)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 20 minutes into the flight, the airplane experienced a total electrical failure. The pilot maneuvered the airplane in circles while attempting to troubleshoot the problem and perform emergency checklists. Despite his efforts, power was not restored, and the electrically actuated hydraulic landing gear would not extend. The pilot attempted to extend the landing gear using the emergency extension system, but when he pulled the T-handle, it broke off from its housing, separating it from the cable. After additional troubleshooting attempts on the electrical system, the pilot chose to land at a nearby airport, and the airplane landed on the runway with the landing gear retracted, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. A mechanic who performed a postaccident examination of the airplane stated that the left starter motor and starter relay/solenoid had electrical shorts. Additionally, the starter relay remained in the closed position, which likely resulted in the airplane drawing a greater electrical load and draining the battery, leading to a complete loss of power.
The emergency extension T-handle was not examined after the accident. However, based on the pilot’s account of the handle breaking off when he attempted to use the emergency extension system, it is likely this prevented the manual extension of the landing gear, which resulted in the forced landing with the landing gear retracted.
Probable cause
The failure of the left starter relay, which resulted in a loss of electrical power during the flight and the failure of the T-handle from the cable led to a forced landing with the landing gear retracted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA209
- Event ID
- 20180614X24757
- Case number
- WPR18LA209
- 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, cause areas. 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: 42caf264358cc40206f00bfdbf739ff5ecbcf5b077aa851caf2ee05bf119d9d5; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:29:28.470Z.