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CHI08CA259 · Piper PA-34-200T

13 Aug 2008 · East Tawas, MI, United States

Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: landing gear not configured

From Marine City Airport (76G) to Iosco County Airport (6D9)

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Event

NTSB case
CHI08CA259
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-34-200T

Aircraft type
Piper PA-34
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
N9114K
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Marine City Airport (76G), Michigan City, MITo Iosco County Airport (6D9), East Tawas, MI
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

  • Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

As the flight neared the intended destination airport, the pilot entered the traffic pattern for runway 26. The approach was normal; however, the landing gear was not extended prior to touchdown and the airplane inadvertently landed gear up. Damage to the airplane included external structural formers on the bottom of the fuselage. The pilot noted that he had failed to lower the landing gear during the before-landing checklist. There were no failures or malfunctions associated with the airplane prior to the accident, according to the pilot.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to lower the landing gear prior to touchdown.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CHI08CA259
Event ID
20081004X12053
Case number
CHI08CA259
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. 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: abb7ed77536cb7a1d38b9a92f42f3b8ba9c1125d1c2df089ff6b947ea29e66b7; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:23:52.896Z.