GAA19CA398 · Cessna R182
Williamsburg Flight Center Cessna R182 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Williamsburg Jamestown Airport (JGG) to Dinwiddie County Airport (PTB)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA398
- 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 R182
- 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
- N757PU
- Operator
- Williamsburg Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williamsburg Jamestown Airport (JGG), Williamsburg, VATo Dinwiddie County Airport (PTB), Petersburg, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 40 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
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the retractable, landing gear-equipped airplane reported that, after takeoff, there was an issue with the alternator. He checked the circuit breakers, which were "in," and decided to land at a nearby airport to have the alternator examined. During the approach, he placed the landing gear handle in the gear extended position. He said it felt "normal" but that he did not remember if he heard the landing gear motor. He did not look outside the high-wing airplane to check the landing gear position, and he did not remember seeing the green landing gear position lights illuminate. He added that the landing gear warning horn did not sound. He reported that, during landing, the nose landing gear was down and locked, but the main landing gear were trailing behind the airplane, and the airplane slid to the left side of the runway. The pilot reported that, if he knew the gear had not extended, he would have manually pumped the landing gear down.
The mechanic reported that, when he arrived at the airplane postaccident, the landing gear circuit breaker was popped. He jacked up the airplane and repositioned the landing gear and then turned on the power, pushed in the landing gear circuit breaker, and raised the landing gear. He did not recall hearing the warning horn but mentioned that the throttle "may have been pushed in." He successfully cycled the landing gear multiple times. The mechanic added that a previous pilot of the accident airplane reported that the landing gear circuit breaker would often pop and that he would lower the landing gear with the manual pump.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left horizontal stabilizer and elevator.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to verify that the main landing gear were extended, which resulted in landing with partially extended landing gear. Contributing to the accident was a tripped landing gear motor circuit breaker.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA398
- Event ID
- 20190711X21021
- Case number
- GAA19CA398
- 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: 54dccf74d20e89981307d489cbd5f7112eb9a3f7b94acd3e2a57272ec051e1a6; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:23:53.926Z.