CEN18LA230 · Cessna TR182
Cessna TR182 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From Moritz Memorial Airport (K61) to Moritz Memorial Airport (K61)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA230
- 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
- N756SW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moritz Memorial Airport (K61), Beloit, KSTo Moritz Memorial Airport (K61), Beloit, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 39 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was practicing takeoffs and landings in the airport traffic pattern when the left main landing gear (MLG) failed to extend. He cycled the gear, but the left MLG still would not extend. He then attempted to manually extend the gear without success. The pilot subsequently executed an emergency landing on the turf runway.
During recovery of the airplane, one of the left brake caliper's back plate bolts was found backed out. Scrape marks were present on the fuselage skin, consistent with contact from the extended back plate bolt. The MLG extension/retraction system and the emergency extension system both performed normally during postaccident examination.
An annual inspection had been completed 6 days before the accident, and the airplane had accumulated a total of 3.2 hours since then. The mechanic that performed the inspection reported that the brake calipers were removed at that time and that the bolts had not been secured with safety wire after they were re-installed.
Given the evidence, it is likely that the mechanic did not properly torque the left brake caliper back plate bolt after he re-installed it during the annual inspection, which allowed it to back out and led to the subsequent failure of the left MLG to extend. Although safety wire would have prevented the bolt from backing out, the airframe manufacturer's service manual was not consistent about whether to use safety wire. Regardless, the bolt would not have backed out if it had been tightened within the specified torque.
Probable cause
The mechanic’s failure to properly torque one of the left brake caliper’s back plate attachment bolts while re-installing it during the annual inspection, which resulted in the left main landing gear not extending before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA230
- Event ID
- 20180618X43310
- Case number
- CEN18LA230
- 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: 1b0f8244d45e70f4d6ada9eb618fa8b1601ddf78d82622c93f5a9bf1407d9547; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:33:43.445Z.