MIA99LA138 · Piper PA-24-180
Piper PA-24-180 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From St Marys Airport (4J6) to 55J
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA138
- 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
- 0
- 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
Piper PA-24-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N7059P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Marys Airport (4J6), ST MARY'S, GATo 55J
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported he entered the traffic pattern to land, and though he had a printed checklist on his lap, he did not use it. Instead he relied on his mental checklist for landing. Wearing a headset, the airplane was landed with the landing gear retracted. Postaccident testing of the landing gear extension system revealed no evidence of failure or malfunction. The landing gear 'up' light illuminated with the airplane on the runway and the master switch turned on. Also, the landing gear warning horn was heard by an FAA certificated airframe and powerplant mechanic who entered the airplane while it was on the runway, with the master switch on and the throttle at a low power position. Postaccident testing of the gear warning system in the presence of an FAA inspector revealed that the horn did not operate when the throttle was at a low power setting, the landing gear selector handle was in the 'up' position, and the master switch was turned on.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to use the printed checklist which resulted in the gear-up landing. A factor associated with the accident was the intermittent failure of the gear warning horn.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA138
- Event ID
- 20001205X00539
- Case number
- MIA99LA138
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: f5f27afd94c817ca9a1a5f2b456df1244d9b7cfd8a8d2b50f6961103b6e9fa21; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:25:21.025Z.