Warbelow'S Air Ventures Piper PA-31-350 accident
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: wheels up landing
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA120
- 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
- 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
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N3527U
- Operator
- Warbelow'S Air Ventures
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo not recorded
- 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 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
- 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
- Wheels up landing
- 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 airline transport pilot was preparing to land a multiengine, retractable landing gear airplane. He reported that while on downwind for landing on runway 21, a passenger in the rear of the airplane distracted his attention while he was performing his prelanding checks, and he failed to lower the landing gear prior to landing. The pilot stated: ' I just forgot to put the gear down after talking to the passenger.' In his written statement to the NTSB, the pilot added that while on short final, a flock of large birds again distracted his attention from completing a 'final gear check before landing.' The airplane landed on its belly, slid for about 550 feet, and came to rest in the center of the runway, about 1,000 feet from the threshold of the approach end of runway 21. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage bulkheads, and belly skin. The pilot noted that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the pre-landing checklist. A factor associated with the accident was the pilot's diverted attention.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA120
- Event ID
- 20001211X10741
- Case number
- ANC98LA120
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-08-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 59cd710eb49bca7f2540a6dbae6a2030fab914a0957d6434d930b9b40e4284b0; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:05:59.622Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N3527U; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, WVBA.