FTW00LA018 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: wheels up landing
From Tucumcari Municipal Airport (TCC) to HSD
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA018
- 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-24-250
- 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
- N6774P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucumcari Municipal Airport (TCC), Tucumcari, NMTo HSD
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Gear down and locked, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he 'entered a downwind leg for runway 35 at which time [he] had lowered the landing gear. Everything seemed normal until touchdown when the gear retracted.' The pilot stated that 'evidently the gear did not lock.' The airplane slid 250 yards and came to a stop upright. A postaccident fire erupted and consumed the cockpit, including the instrument panel, and the belly of the airframe. According to the Pilot's Operating Handbook, a green light on the instrument panel below the landing gear switch indicates all gears down and locked. Furthermore, item number 6 on the landing checklist states the following: 'Landing gear down (under 150 MPH check green light on, warning horn off, gear emergency handle in forward position).'
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to follow the landing checklist and verify that the landing gear was down and locked, which resulted in a wheels up landing. A factor was the failure of the landing gear locking mechanism for an undetermined reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA018
- Event ID
- 20001212X19961
- Case number
- FTW00LA018
- 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: 76d1a2da9f8cf5a040a6ac98d21cc643f0ffac9d238bb48b5e92edb995713f80; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:50:18.578Z.