WPR13CA021 · Piper PA24 250
Piper PA24 250 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL) to Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13CA021
- 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 PA24 250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N7950P
- Operator
- Scott Dineen
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fullerton Municipal Airport (FUL), Fullerton, CATo Lake Tahoe Airport (TVL), Lake Tahoe, 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 pilot reported that he aborted a landing due to traffic on the active runway and retracted the landing gear. He stated that on the second approach to land he carried extra power because of the gusty wind conditions, but during the landing flare, he realized that he had failed to extend the landing gear. After he realized that the landing gear was not extended, the pilot added full power; however, the airplane impacted the runway with the landing gear in the retracted position. The pilot stated that he did not follow the checklist and that he did not hear the landing gear warning horn during his approach. When informed that the throttle position to activate the landing gear warning horn was only about 1/2 inch forward of the full aft idle position, the pilot indicated that he had not retarded the throttle that far. The airplane sustained substantial damage to its undercarriage as a result of the abnormal runway contact.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that the landing gear was extended before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13CA021
- Event ID
- 20121023X54253
- Case number
- WPR13CA021
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-10-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0af4bfba28cf0ed5c40235b51292c59b8f6740c0f6bebbeede644a30ac9d3970; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:16:02.199Z.