GAA16CA506 · NEW Piper Aircraft Inc PA-28R 201
Saint Louis University NEW Piper Aircraft Inc PA-28R 201 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS) to St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA506
- 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
NEW Piper Aircraft Inc PA-28R 201
- Aircraft type
- New Piper PA-28
- 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
- N834PC
- Operator
- Saint Louis University
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS), East St. Louis, ILTo St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS), East St. Louis, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2006)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after four stop and go landings under night visual meteorological conditions, he planned to terminate the flight with a soft field landing. He further reported that as the airplane touched down, he heard scraping and the airplane subsequently slid to a stop on the runway. The pilot reported that he forgot to extend the landing gear for landing and did not hear the landing gear warning horn through his conventional (non-noise canceling) headset.
The fuselage sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
During a postaccident interview with the chief flight instructor of the operator, he reported that the gear warning horn in the accident airplane was normally audible in the cockpit, but does not sound directly through the headset. He further reported that they are in the process of installing a "supplemental voice" gear warning horn that will sound through the airplane's audio panel.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear, which resulted in a gear-up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA506
- Event ID
- 20160926X14319
- Case number
- GAA16CA506
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-09-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f144405400ae1d17f96c79ad80077084c4824fff12e341a0b7422c8eb42584b0; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:18:40.690Z.