LAX88LA318 · Cessna T310R
Cessna T310R · Accident: gear not extended during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX88LA318
- 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
Cessna T310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N5126J
- Operator
- Edward E. Dye · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 › Checklist, not used
- Pilot in command › Gear extension, not performed
- Pilot in command › Wheels up landing, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT STATED THAT HE WAS TROUBLESHOOTING A PROBLEM WITH THE AIRPLANE'S FUEL FLOW SYSTEM. DURING THE PREFLIGHT RUN-UP, HE NOTICED THAT THE FUEL FLOW GAUGE FOR THE RIGHT ENGINE WAS READING TOO HIGH. HE TOOK OFF TO SEE IF HE COULD MAKE AN INFLIGHT DETERMINATION OF THE PROBLEM. WHEN AIRBORNE, THE GAUGE INDICATED A VALUE THAT THE PILOT CONSIDERED EXCESSIVE, SO HE RETURNED TO THE AIRPORT TO LAND. HE MADE A NO FLAP APPROACH, WITH POWER SET ABOVE TEN INCHES OF MANIFOLD PRESSURE. THIS CONFIGURATION DOES NOT ALLOW ACTIVATION OF THE AIRPLANE'S GEAR-UP WARNING SYSTEM. THE PILOT DID NOT EXTEND THE LANDING GEAR. DURING LANDING FLARE THE PILOT REDUCED POWER, ACTIVATING THE GEAR-UP WARNING HORN. THE PILOT MISTAKENLY THOUGHT THAT THIS WAS THE STALL WARNING HORN AND LOWERED THE NOSE TO LAND. THE AIRPLANE COLLIDED WITH THE RUNWAY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX88LA318
- Event ID
- 20001213X26864
- Case number
- LAX88LA318
- 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 1988-09-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5a21801fdd52f8b960808a7ff55ec959d11376fe349d715fd52932a672266299; retrieved 2026-09-23T08:51:19.243Z.