American Medflight Piper PA 31T - II accident
Piper PA 31T - II · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Reno Tahoe International Airport (KRNO) to Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA391
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 31T - II
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N774MF
- Operator
- American Medflight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reno Tahoe International Airport (KRNO), Reno, NVTo Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1979)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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 pilot stated that while on an instrument landing system (ILS) approach for the medical life-flight, he was struggling to keep the airplane on the localizer and glide path. As the airplane descended through 800 to 900 feet above the ground, he broke out of the cloud layer but had difficulty locating the runway in the dark night conditions. During the landing flare he reduced the throttle and as the airplane touched down on the runway surface, he realized the landing gear were retracted; he did not hear any horns. The pilot recalled that when he selected the landing gear, he may have put the handle in neutral rather than keeping his hand on the lever and waiting for the three green lights to illuminate confirming the extended position. He did not follow his normal checklists because of the demands of the ILS approach. He also cited a few stressors in his life that may have contributed to a distraction including a change of airplanes and few ILS approaches performed in the recent six months. The pilot further added that there were no pre impact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane incurred substantial damage to the lower fuselage and engine mounts.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear which resulted in a gear-up landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to use the checklist and reported stress.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA391
- Event ID
- 20140926X32050
- Case number
- WPR14CA391
- 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 2014-09-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6818ed21bd93793e4d9589d443fe62b4d7b98cf30f5be98390d60e1007c38bd7; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:48:27.540Z.