CEN09CA118 · SOCATA TBM 700
Caterer's Leasing SOCATA TBM 700 · Accident on approach
From Clayton Municipal Airpark (KCAO) to Clovis Municipal Airport (KCVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA118
- 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
SOCATA TBM 700
- Aircraft type
- Socata TBM-700
- 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
- N70LR
- Operator
- Caterer's Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clayton Municipal Airpark (KCAO), Clayton, NMTo Clovis Municipal Airport (KCVN), Clovis, NM
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 was approaching the non-towered airport from the north, making a straight-in approach to runway 22, and was using the autopilot while still nine miles out. There was a 15-knot headwind and the airplane was still fast and a little high when 4.2 miles out, but the pilot reduced the power to zero percent and he "reserved" lowering the gear because he was still at 185 knots. The pilot said "the approach felt normal, the next thing I knew we were sliding down the runway". The airplane slid to a stop on the right side of the runway with the landing gear still retracted. There were no injuries to the four persons on board, but substantial damage to the left rear spar and center spar carrythrough and aft fuselage structure.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to complete the before-landing checklist, which led to his failure to lower the gear before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA118
- Event ID
- 20090105X93800
- Case number
- CEN09CA118
- 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: 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 2008-12-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f4e7b211ad803d63ce175862e630f167248ca85435b056f636e30253620b6e64; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:40:09.245Z.