CEN19LA246 · Swearingen SA227 AC
Pak West Airlines Swearingen SA227 AC · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From El Paso International Airport (ELP) to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA246
- 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 SA227 AC
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA227
- 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
- N681TR
- Operator
- Pak West Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TXTo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1987)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain noted that the purpose of the flight was second-in-command pilot training for the first officer and the observer, in turn. He reported that after takeoff, the landing gear retracted normally. The captain executed a practice instrument approach to a missed approach. When they attempted to retract the landing gear after initiating the missed approach, the left main gear in-transit light remained illuminated. The right main and nose landing gears retracted normally. Both hydraulic system low pressure warning lights subsequently illuminated. Efforts to troubleshoot using the emergency checklist and to extend the landing gear manually were not successful. The captain ultimately landed the airplane with the left main landing gear partially extended and subsequently lost directional control, which resulted in a runway excursion and impact with an airport sign. The airplane sustained damage to the outboard left wing, left main landing gear, and left propeller.
During a postaccident examination, hydraulic fluid was observed in the left main landing gear wheel well; no hydraulic fluid was observed in the reservoir sight gauge or on the dip stick. Hydraulic pressure was subsequently applied to the airplane, and no leaks were observed in the landing gear system. Thus, the source of the hydraulic fluid leak could not be determined. In addition, the reason that the landing gear failed to fully extend during the emergency extension procedure could not be determined because no preaccident anomalies were observed.
Probable cause
Failure of the left main landing gear to fully extend due to a lack of hydraulic fluid and during emergency extension procedures, which resulted in the collapse of the landing gear during landing and the subsequent runway excursion and collision with a sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA246
- Event ID
- 20190728X30127
- Case number
- CEN19LA246
- 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: f330f792e42ebcb5101dff23c1a81d981d8e5ba09d0a0476b86cc3dbf7049cc2; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:35:29.682Z.