CHI04LA087 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: gear retraction on ground during landing
From Illinois Valley Regional Airport Walter A Duncan Field (VYS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA087
- 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-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N15118
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Illinois Valley Regional Airport Walter A Duncan Field (VYS), Peru, ILTo 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 · landing roll
- 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 retraction on ground
- 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
- Dual student › Gear retraction, inadvertent activation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged when the dual student inadvertently selected the landing gear lever during landing rollout. The right main gear subsequently collapsed and the airplane departed the right side of the runway. The dual student reported that after landing the instructor asked him to raise the flaps. He stated that he inadvertently selected the gear switch instead of the flap lever. He noted: "The gear switch was not moved to the complete up position before the instructor announced and I realized my error." The right main landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to veer to the right and off the side of the runway. The nose gear subsequently collapsed and the aircraft came to rest in the grass adjacent to the runway. During a post-accident inspection, the landing gear system was activated by using the cockpit gear switch and the landing gear retracted and extended as designed. The squat switch was determined to be installed and adjusted in accordance with the manufacturer's requirements. Electrical functionality of the switch was tested and no anomalies were observed.
Probable cause
The inadvertent landing gear retraction by the dual student during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA087
- Event ID
- 20040319X00352
- Case number
- CHI04LA087
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4b111bb2b223c15510cbea73291075e750a476379f3bc019ba09a4228736e6c5; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:52:32.232Z.