ATL04IA054 · New Piper Aircraft, Inc. PA-46-350P
New Piper Aircraft, Inc. PA-46-350P · Incident: wheels up landing
From KSTT · St. Thomas to KSTT
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04IA054
- 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
- Incident
- 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
New Piper Aircraft, Inc. PA-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- New Piper PA-46
- 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
- N5345S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KSTT · St. ThomasTo KSTT
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that, during landing flare, the airplane touched down on the landing gear then rose back up in the air briefly. The pilot stated he held the airplane in ground effect, and when it settled back toward the runway, the gear folded up as they touched the ground. Witnesses reported the gear was extended at touchdown. Examination revealed the left and right nose gear doors were attached to the airframe along the full length of their respective hinges. The right nose gear door displayed no scraping or damage. The left nose gear door displayed scrape marks on the vent fins, as well as one localized scrape mark on the inboard edge of the door. The localized scrape mark corresponded with the location of the nosewheel tire when in retracted position behind the door. There was no damage observed on the nose gear assembly. Examination of the right main landing gear revealed no damage to the gear door or the wheel hub cap. The radar pod beneath the airplane's right wing displayed scrape damage. Examination of the left main landing gear revealed no damage to the gear door, and the wheel hub cap was scraped around its entire center circumference. Functional testing of the landing gear system revealed no evidence of malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate inflight planning and failure to extend the landing gear, which resulted in a wheels-up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04IA054
- Event ID
- 20031224X02091
- Case number
- ATL04IA054
- 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: dcfd3bf6e696ac4807ba6aee0d138f36e14363dd3d2bffa914ad0b802f64a84a; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:04:49.783Z.