CEN10LA524 · Piper PA-46-350P
Williams Mirage Piper PA-46-350P · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Greeley–Weld County Airport (GXY) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA524
- 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-46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N4167A
- Operator
- Williams Mirage
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greeley–Weld County Airport (GXY), Greeley, COTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, CO
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot taxied the airplane to a self-service fueling facility where he added 84 gallons of fuel to the 20 gallons already in the tanks. He became distracted and forgot to replace the right fuel tank cap. He departed with the right fuel tank selected, and the auxiliary boost pump on. Approximately 100 feet above the runway, he retracted the landing gear and flaps and the engine lost power. He established a controlled glide back to the runway, but didn't have time to lower the landing gear. The airplane landed with the wheels-up and veered off the right side of the runway. A postaccident examination disclosed the pressure vessel had been compromised. The right fuel tank cap was later found on the taxiway. No fuel stains were noted on the wing. The engine was later functionally tested at various power settings, including full power, and no anomalies were noted.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA524
- Event ID
- 20100908X53605
- Case number
- CEN10LA524
- 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: b7ec647ab672eb9b58daba6ea0c325006612aa87d5573cdb3facfe04accb2bea; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:07:52.822Z.