CHI90LA141 · Piper PA-31-350
Pullen Aviation Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: gear not extended during landing
From Sikeston Memorial Municipal Airport (SIK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI90LA141
- 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-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
- N62869
- Operator
- Pullen Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sikeston Memorial Municipal Airport (SIK), Sikeston, MOTo 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 · 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
- Gear not extended
- 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 extension, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT STATED THAT HE WAS DISTRACTED FROM HIS NORMAL PROCEDURES/CHECKLISTS, WHILE IN THE VFR TRAFFIC PATTERN AT AN UNCONTROLLED AIRPORT, AND THAT HE FAILED TO INSURE THAT THE LANDING GEAR WAS EXTENDED AND LOCKED BEFORE TOUCHDOWN. HE REPORTED THAT HE WAS CONCERNED WITH MAKING A DECENT LANDING FROM A 'STEEPER-THAN-NORMAL' APPROACH AT AN UNFAMILIAR AIRPORT IN DARK NIGHT CONDITIONS. HE HAD MOVED THE GEAR SELECT HANDLE DOWN, BUT NOT FAR ENOUGH TO ACTIVATE THE GEAR EXTEND MECHANISM. HE STATED THAT HE NEVER LOOKED FOR THREE GREEN LIGHTS (TO VERIFY THE GEAR WAS DOWN AND LOCKED) UNTIL HE HEARD A SCRAPING NOISE AS THE AIRCRAFT TOUCHED DOWN. THE LANDING GEAR WARNING HORN WAS FOUND TO OPERATE INTERMITENTLY DUE TO DIRTY CONTACT POINTS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO INSURE THAT THE LANDING GEAR WAS EXTENDED AND LOCKED PRIOR TO TOUCHDOWN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI90LA141
- Event ID
- 20001212X23114
- Case number
- CHI90LA141
- 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 1990-05-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4d29f2e34686d77c96508afe96e557bd5a4460d57f46f9ed12dd4ce1a3521015; retrieved 2026-09-23T06:06:42.997Z.