GAA16LA087 · Piper PA 31 350
Creative Marketing Associates Piper PA 31 350 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Peter O Knight Airport (TPF) to Clearwater Air Park (CLW)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16LA087
- 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 31 350
- 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
- N27405
- Operator
- Creative Marketing Associates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peter O Knight Airport (TPF), Tampa, FLTo Clearwater Air Park (CLW), Clearwater, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1977)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that, on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, he applied flaps and pushed the landing gear lever "completely down" and then saw the landing gear extension indicator lights illuminate. On short final and as the airplane passed through 500 ft above ground level, he verified that the three green landing gear extension lights had illuminated and applied full flaps for landing. Subsequently, the airplane landed hard with the gear retracted and skidded to a stop on the runway.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that it sustained substantial damage to the fuselage keel beam, formers, and stringers. Postaccident examination of the landing gear system revealed no evidence of any faults, malfunctions, or anomalies with the system, including the landing gear extension indicator lights and warning horn. It is likely that the pilot failed to extend the landing gear, which resulted in the gear-up landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16LA087
- Event ID
- 20151222X81747
- Case number
- GAA16LA087
- 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: dcfdd93491b2ec69775e2c457b7f604c48525dd524afda42cb408618589f7ef8; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:02:57.788Z.