CEN10CA533 · Piper PA46-310P
Avionta Piper PA46-310P · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Animas Air Park (00C) to Farmington, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA533
- 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 PA46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N24WW
- Operator
- Avionta
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Animas Air Park (00C), Durango, COTo Farmington, 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
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing after completing a practice instrument landing system approach in bright day conditions. The pilot reported that he extended the landing gear and flaps when he was about three miles from the airport. The airplane crossed the threshold of the runway and was just about to touch down when the pilot noticed that the landing gear green indicator lights appeared not to be illuminated. The pilot applied full throttle and immediately raised the landing gear and flaps. During the go-around attempt the airplane settled and the propeller struck the runway. The pilot held full power and a nose-high attitude as the airspeed decreased. The airplane struck obstructions on the side of the runway, resulting in substantial damage to the left wing. It then came to rest upright approximately halfway down the length of the runway. An inspection of the aircraft systems by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed that the cockpit lighting dimmer switch, which controlled the illumination intensity of the landing gear lights, was set to the “Night Dim” position.
Probable cause
The pilot’s premature retraction of the landing gear and the flaps during landing. Contributing to the accident was the inadvertent dimming of the cockpit lighting, resulting in a perceived unsafe gear configuration.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA533
- Event ID
- 20100912X64456
- Case number
- CEN10CA533
- 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: c692d08278265281265e97619e24b21ccb7777f7843d0b8d06258a297fed6697; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:09:58.660Z.