CHI01LA096 · Piper PA-30
Piper PA-30 · Accident: undershoot during landing
From Appleton International Airport (ATW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA096
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N8196Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Appleton International Airport (ATW), Appleton, WITo 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › Engine shutdown, intentional
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft undershot the runway during a precautionary landing, struck a runway approach light and came to rest about 10 feet from the end of the runway. The flight was being conducted to practice instrument approaches. During an approach, the landing gear down indicator light did not illuminate on gear extension. The pilot attempted to troubleshoot the problem and ultimately decided to land the aircraft. The pilot decided to shut down the engines on final approach in an attempt to minimize engine and propeller damage in the event of a landing gear collapse. The pilot said, "I cut the power too soon."
Probable cause
The misjudged glidepath and the intentional engine shutdown by the pilot. Factors were the false indication of the landing gear down light and the approach light.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA096
- Event ID
- 20010302X00533
- Case number
- CHI01LA096
- 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: b2292c34b9f7330a47c589de08cf7943744090a92d028fcd4b55befda35499e1; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:08:20.930Z.