WPR12CA310 · Piper PA-46 500TP
Piper PA-46 500TP · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM) to Delano Municipal Airport (DLO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12CA310
- 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 500TP
- 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
- N558RW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (TRM), Thermal, CATo Delano Municipal Airport (DLO), Delano, CA
- 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 owner-pilot was the only person on board and was flying the turboprop airplane on a personal business trip. When he was about 10 miles south-southeast of the non-towered destination airport, he heard the pilot of a twin-engine airplane report that he was approaching the same airport from the north. The wind favored a landing on runway 32, and the turboprop pilot planned to fly a straight-in approach for landing on that runway. When the turboprop pilot was on final approach for runway 32 about 5 miles from the airport, he heard the twin-engine pilot announce that he was on the left base leg of the traffic pattern for runway 14. As the turboprop pilot continued the approach about 2 miles from the airport, he observed the twin-engine airplane on his traffic display; at that time, the twin-engine airplane was still about 6 miles from the airport. Constant radio transmissions from aircraft at two other non-towered airports in the vicinity precluded the turboprop pilot from communicating clearly with the twin-engine pilot to coordinate their arrivals. Based on the information from his traffic display, the turboprop pilot continued his straight-in approach for runway 32. Due to the distractions of the twin-engine airplane and the radio communication difficulties, the turboprop pilot did not perform the approach checklist and forgot to extend the landing gear, which he did not realize until touchdown. The airplane came to rest upright and intact about 50 feet off the side of the runway. The pilot was uninjured. Examination revealed substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. The pilot reported that he had traveled internationally in the preceding weeks and that he experienced some "mental fatigue." It was not determined whether or when the twin-engine airplane landed at the same airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear before touchdown. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to perform the appropriate checklist due to distractions posed by another airplane inbound to the same airport and a cluttered radio frequency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12CA310
- Event ID
- 20120718X75927
- Case number
- WPR12CA310
- 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: e273574a12d3a62718fa32e20ad3b45520811910d44080e878cedd5cbe7d2687; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:57:52.965Z.