ERA10CA156 · Piaggio P180
Piaggio P180 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU) to Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA156
- 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
Piaggio P180
- Aircraft type
- Piaggio P180
- 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
- N29JS
- Operator
- Franklin Mew
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU), Greenville, SCTo Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NC
- 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
- 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 systems
- 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 stated that after takeoff, he experienced a primary trim failure and continued to the destination using secondary trim. The pilot stated that during final approach his airspeed was too high to lower the landing gear. The pilot "continued working the trim," and was looking for any traffic in the pattern. In the landing flare, he heard "an unusual noise like something scraping," performed a go-around, and realized he had not extended the landing gear. The pilot then extended the gear and landed without incident. Inspection of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the airplane's fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly configure the landing gear for landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's diverted attention looking for traffic and manipulating the secondary trim controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA156
- Event ID
- 20100302X85127
- Case number
- ERA10CA156
- 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: 40772da565afd8854856cc2390c955e4b14c251f88fbbd3cdade983459d7ac9e; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:42:52.128Z.