NYC08CA073 · Piper PA-31T
Darby Aviation Piper PA-31T · Accident: wheels up landing
From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW) to Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA073
- 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-31T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N112ED
- Operator
- Darby Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW), Fort Worth, TXTo Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL), Muscle Shoals, AL
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Wheels up landing, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While conducting an instrument approach, the pilot of a Piper PA-31T crossed the initial approach fix and descended to 2,300 feet, per the instrument approach procedure. Upon reaching the final approach fix, he then selected 1,200 feet in the altitude preselect and almost simultaneously visually acquired the runway and visual approach slope indicator. The pilot then "became distracted," and" forgot to extend the [landing] gear." He then fully extended the wing flaps, but the power setting remained above the "trigger point" for the landing gear warning horn. The airplane touched down with the landing gear retracted and was substantially damaged.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to lower the landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA073
- Event ID
- 20080123X00097
- Case number
- NYC08CA073
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-12-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a59a81d855f53e7d128191faacf63848ce6fc2d973a5e54e78d5fc115ff9f18e; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:14:10.780Z.