CEN13FA351 · Piper PA-24-260
8815 Papa Piper PA-24-260 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From John F Kennedy Memorial Airport (ASX) to Major Gilbert Field Airport (4R5)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA351
- 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
- 2 · 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-24-260
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N8815P
- Operator
- 8815 Papa
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John F Kennedy Memorial Airport (ASX), Ashland, WITo Major Gilbert Field Airport (4R5), La Pointe, WI
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing the airplane after a cross-country flight. A witness heard squealing and the sound of screeching tires. He looked toward the runway and saw the airplane bouncing out of control. He reported that the airplane then went to full throttle and pitched nose-up to about 45 degrees as it started climbing. The witness thought the airplane was going to attempt another landing. He turned around, but subsequently heard an explosion. The airplane impacted in a nearby wooded area and a ground fire subsequently occurred. Broken tree branches indicated a linear downward path to where the airplane came to rest. All three propeller blade tips were ground down, consistent with contact with the runway. An examination of the runway showed a series of parallel witness slash marks consistent with propeller contact. The runway exhibited a white media transfer that approximated the path of the slash marks. Strips of copper were also found on the runway. The airplane was equipped with a white antenna mounted to its underbelly and the recovered strips of copper were consistent in shape with sections of the antenna assembly's copper sense plate. No anomalies with the airplane's engine or systems were found. Although the landing gear was found extended at the accident site, based on the evidence on the runway and the damage to the propellers and the underbelly antenna, it is likely that the pilot did not lower the landing gear during his first landing attempt.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control after deciding to go around after a gear-up landing, resulting in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA351
- Event ID
- 20130615X22851
- Case number
- CEN13FA351
- 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: 86d3f2f7b98b6db50b5b5949f416b24528d227007385969d0e5605665c8e337b; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:58:48.291Z.