CEN18LA246 · Cessna 337 F
Cessna 337 F · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure on approach
From Vinland Valley Aerodrome (K64) to Vinland Valley Aerodrome (K64)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA246
- 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 337 F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N107BL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vinland Valley Aerodrome (K64), Baldwin City, KSTo Vinland Valley Aerodrome (K64), Baldwin City, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1970)
- 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 final
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a local flight to practice single-engine maneuvers. After taking off and climbing the airplane to 3,500 ft, he shut down the rear engine and feathered the propeller. After performing some turns and climbs, the pilot attempted to unfeather the propeller and restart the engine but was unsuccessful. He returned to the airport to set up for a single-engine approach. During the approach, the pilot realized that the flaps were no longer in the full-flap setting and that a landing on the grass runway was going to be close, so he chose to perform a go-around. However, as the pilot began to go around, he realized that the airplane could not maintain altitude. He maneuvered the airplane for an off-airport landing to a nearby field, during which the airplane struck small trees and a fence and sustained substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage.
The rear engine propeller had a remote hydraulic accumulator that assisted in unfeathering the propeller and was normally serviced to 120 pounds per square inch (psi). During an annual inspection that took place 4 flight hours before the accident flight, it was noted that the pressure was slightly low. During postaccident examination, the accumulator pressure was 85 psi. It is likely that a nitrogen leak occurred between the time the accumulator was last serviced and the time of the accident; however, the reason for the nitrogen leak could not be determined. Further, the flap switch was not holding position due to a loss of tension at the flap switch pivot, which is likely why the flaps were not in the full-flap setting as reported by the pilot.
Probable cause
The loss of hydraulic accumulator pressure for reasons that could not be determined, which prevented the propeller from unfeathering, and the pilot's improper decision to attempt a go-around, which resulted in an off-airport landing and the airplane impacting trees and a fence. Contributing to the accident was the loss of tension at the flap switch pivot, which prevented it from holding position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA246
- Event ID
- 20180701X65752
- Case number
- CEN18LA246
- 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: 744c294b73fa603152eda42f987bb0f944c090f47685801314e7e88467027cd1; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:43:45.851Z.