Richland Aviation Cessna 404 accident
Cessna 404 · Accident: medical event during landing
From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA350
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 404
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 404
- 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
- N5409G
- Operator
- Richland Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, MTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1977)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Medical event
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the flight and landing approach were uneventful. He recalled configuring the airplane for landing by extending the landing gear and flaps then began the landing flare. His next recollection was of being in the airplane at the right side of the runway surrounded by a cloud of dust. He did not have any recollection of how the airplane got there. Examination of the airplane found the landing gear had collapsed; the nose structure was deformed. While the exact cause of the pilot’s behavior change could not be determined from the available evidence, it is likely he was impaired by a medical event during landing and then possibly incapacitated for a short time. A number of possibilities could explain this event, none of which would have left any direct evidence and all of which could have caused a period of unconsciousness or amnesia. Although he was diagnosed with COVID-19 following the accident, symptoms would have been unlikely to suddenly severely impair the pilot and his memory but allow him to fully recover within a few minutes.
Probable cause
The pilot experiencing an episode of impaired behavior and incapacitation for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA350
- Event ID
- 20210921103932
- Case number
- WPR21LA350
- 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: 05f9062b9d08385b3449299df54f4889e6901b75812e71f13357bfb46c37eff4; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:34:05.510Z.