CEN11LA418 · Piper PA-28R-201
Piper PA-28R-201 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Rantoul National Aviation Center - Frank Elliot field (KTIP) to Rantoul National Aviation Center - Frank Elliot field (KTIP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA418
- 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-28R-201
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N4106Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rantoul National Aviation Center - Frank Elliot field (KTIP), Rantoul, ILTo Rantoul National Aviation Center - Frank Elliot field (KTIP), Rantoul, IL
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the landing gear did not fully retract after takeoff. He elected to return to the departure airport for a wheels-up landing after several unsuccessful attempts to retract the landing gear. The pilot did not use the emergency extension system after noticing that the green landing gear position lights were not illuminated. A postaccident examination revealed that the main landing gear were extended about 1-foot below their respective wheel wells. The nose landing gear was fully retracted into its respective wheel well and its gear doors were closed. Further examination revealed that the electrical motor for the landing gear power pack did not function due to excessive brush wear. The landing gear extended properly using the emergency extension system during a postaccident test.
Probable cause
The pilot did not use the emergency landing gear extension system, which resulted in a wheels-up landing. Contributing to the accident was the inoperative landing gear power pack motor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA418
- Event ID
- 20110625X31003
- Case number
- CEN11LA418
- 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: e6137125603d77b73cdc0fa66ead5e653b18284dc01db0bb69718eca2002ff26; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:21:10.255Z.