WPR09CA120 · Piper PA-24-260
Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (LHM) to Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (LHM)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA120
- 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-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8816P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (LHM), Lincoln, CATo Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (LHM), Lincoln, CA
- 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 Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during departure on a local night flight, the airplane's door popped open. He turned to downwind and attempted to close the door. While on downwind, the airport's pilot activated runway lights turned off. The pilot then had to reactivate the runway lights and he landed the airplane without extending the landing gear. Subsequently, the airplane caught fire and was consumed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear for landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's diverted attention due to an open door and the airport's pilot activated runway lights turning off.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA120
- Event ID
- 20090220X54638
- Case number
- WPR09CA120
- 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 2009-02-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ba2d4ddee9ba687fc3856a411494247bd92bb4b50c87ef6b622a424c23010b22; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:45:55.519Z.