ERA10LA478 · Piaggio P-180
Get Me There Piaggio P-180 · Accident: landing gear not configured during takeoff
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE) to St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA478
- 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 P-180
- Aircraft type
- Piaggio P-180
- 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
- N590JL
- Operator
- Get Me There
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), Clearwater, FLTo St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), Clearwater, FL
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 airplane had just undergone several inspections, including one that required operational testing of the landing gear and one, the replacement of an elevator flight control surface, that required a flight check. The pilot-in-command (PIC) later stated that he could not recall observing the position of the landing gear selector during his preflight inspection but reported that he would have checked it. He also reported that part of his preflight inspection included testing the landing gear indicator and warning system using the rotary test switch; no discrepancies were reported.
The flight crew started the engines and taxied the airplane onto the active runway with the flaps set to the mid position. After the takeoff power was applied and set, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded the second pilot announce rotation at 80 knots. At the moment the CVR recorded the second pilot announce rotation, the CVR recorded a sound consistent with the hydraulic power pack motor operating for 2 seconds, beginning gear retraction. Following the sound of the motor, the CVR recorded a continuous low-pitch tone on the intercom for the next 14 seconds.
The PIC reported that he rotated at 100 knots and, with what he thought were the left and right main landing gears still on the ground, he thought he heard a sound consistent with a blown tire. Recalling that the left elevator had been replaced, he elected to abort the takeoff. He reported that, as he began to retard the throttles and set the nose landing gear onto the runway, he realized that the airplane had descended below the normal wheels-on-ground sight line and that the belly of the aircraft had begun to scrape the runway. The airplane then slid for 1,000 feet before coming to rest upright on the runway with each of the landing gear retracted.
After the accident, an individual who helped recover the airplane reported observing the landing gear selector in the up position. The landing gear was lowered and the airplane was then towed to the ramp. Postaccident testing revealed no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions of the landing gear or landing gear position and warning system. The investigation was not able to determine who placed the landing gear selector in the up position.
Probable cause
The flight crew did not ensure that the landing gear was down and that it indicated down through the takeoff sequence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA478
- Event ID
- 20100914X51417
- Case number
- ERA10LA478
- 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: 1aec12edc9ae7f29835b187af6225eb75665da1c740b9caf8aa21e186fd5c9a6; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:12:16.997Z.