LAX93LA291 · Piper PA-39
Proflight Piper PA-39 · Accident: complete gear collapsed during landing
From Palm Springs International Airport (PSP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX93LA291
- 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-39
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-39
- 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
- N8975Y
- Operator
- Proflight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Springs International Airport (PSP), Palm Springs, CATo 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 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Complete gear collapsed
- 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 › Gear retraction, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taking a multi engine class certification check ride. The pilot examiner stated that the applicant pilot had been flying a Piper PA23-160 for his multi engine training. The PA23 cockpit is set up with the landing gear selector handle on the right side of the power quadrant and the flap selector on the left. The PA23 was in the maintenance shop and the applicant was given the Piper PA39 for his flight test. The PA39 cockpit is set up with the landing gear selector handle on the left side of the power quadrant and the flap selector on the right. The examiner stated that during the traffic pattern he personally checked that the landing gear handle was in the DOWN position, with three green indicator lights. The aircraft made a normal landing. The examiner said that during the landing roll out his attention was distracted momentarily by locating the radio microphone. When he looked up again, the examiner saw the aircraft settling down on the runway with the landing gear selector handle in the UP position. According to the pilot's statement, he said that he was reaching for the flap handle to retract the landing flaps and mistakenly moved the gear handle instead.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent movement of the landing gear selector switch to the up position. A factor in the accident was the difference in cockpit switch layout between the PA23 and PA39 aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX93LA291
- Event ID
- 20001211X12953
- Case number
- LAX93LA291
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1993-07-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5e547f000d242b20eed7a6a270b897255980500191e312ad6f904af931b797ce; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:52:03.579Z.