CHI08CA163 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Richard Downing Airport (I40) to Harry Clever Field (PHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA163
- 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
Mooney M20K
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N252AD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richard Downing Airport (I40), Coshocton, OHTo Harry Clever Field (PHD), New Philadelphia, OH
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Landing gear not configured
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot thought he had lowered the landing gear at the final approach fix, but "did not check it down and locked." The airplane was traveling faster than normal as it crossed over the runway threshold, and it ballooned during the landing flare. The pilot heard the audible gear warning say "check gear" as he was reaching to increase the throttle for a go-around. He was reaching for the landing gear handle as the airplane settled onto the runway. The airplane slid about 850 feet before coming to rest. The lower fuselage skin and its corresponding substructure were damaged during the wheels-up landing. The pilot said the accident could have been prevented if he had verified the position of the landing gear prior to landing. He also said that he was distracted during the approach with changing radio frequencies, and correcting for being high and fast on the approach.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear prior to landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA163
- Event ID
- 20080630X00949
- Case number
- CHI08CA163
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 4b2f57f2313bf2bd65502a569c4ef84e34ab4745cfc781bee98f542235a2652c; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:50:10.737Z.