LAX85LA289 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident: gear collapsed during landing
From Q95 · RUTH, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX85LA289
- 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
- N5916P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q95 · RUTH, 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
- 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 collapsed
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, improper
- Pilot in command › Gear down and locked, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING ARRIVAL AT DUSK, THE PLT ATTEMPTED TO LOWER THE LANDING GEAR, BUT DID NOT OBSERVE A GEAR DOWM LIGHT INDICATION. HE RECYCLED THE GEAR SEVERAL TIMES, THEN UTILIZED THE EMERGENCY GEAR EXTENTION SYS. HE STATED THAT WHEN HE USED THE EXTENTION SYS, HE RELEASED THE ELECTRIC GEAR MOTOR, THEN EXTENDED THE TELESCOPIC EMERGENCY ARM REARWARD. HOWEVER, THE ARM SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FORWARD POSITION TO LOWER THE GEAR. ALSO, THE INVESTIGATOR NOTED THAT WHEN THE NAV LIGHTS WERE TURNED ON, THE GREEN GEAR DOWN & AMBER GEAR UP LIGHTS WOULD HAVE AUTOMATICALLY DIMMED. SUBSEQUENTLY, WHEN THE PLT LANDED, THE GEAR COLLAPSED, A FIRE ERUPTED & THE ACFT WAS DESTROYED. NO PRE-ACCIDENT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION WAS FOUND DURING THE INVESTIGATION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX85LA289
- Event ID
- 20001214X36827
- Case number
- LAX85LA289
- 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 1985-06-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: be648b5607cbe9facc87d5ed618c8976f01b034fb2505641132cb92d4c0fe5bc; retrieved 2026-09-23T17:08:56.240Z.