GAA17CA023 · North American NAVION A
North American NAVION A · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Birchwood Airport (BCV) to Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA023
- 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
North American NAVION A
- Aircraft type
- North American NAVION
- 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
- N8895H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Birchwood Airport (BCV), BIRCHWOOD, AKTo Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ), Palmer, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1947)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of a retractable landing gear equipped airplane reported that he landed with the landing gear retracted. He further reported that the airplane slid about 100 feet to a stop near the right edge of the runway.
The fuselage sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aviation Safety Inspector assigned to the accident, by coincidence, was already at the accident airport for an unrelated event. The inspector observed the landing gear retracted into the wheel wells and observed the landing gear handle in the up position. He further reported that the pilot was using a "noise cancelling headset." According to the inspector, the landing gear warning horn was not designed to sound through the headset/ intercom system, but would be audible in the cockpit. He reported that during the airplane recovery process the landing gear handle was moved to the down position and the landing gear extended and locked normally.
The FAA Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB), CE-16-08, Noise Cancelling Headsets, in part states: "In many cases, pilots are using the noise cancelling headsets as supplementary equipment during operations. When wearing these headsets, the pilot may be unaware of environmental sounds and audible warning annunciations in the cockpit that do not come through the intercom system."
The FAA SAIB recommends that general aviation pilots and operators:
• Become familiar with the safety information in FAA InFO 0700
• Elect to find other solutions to discern such alarms or sounds, or discontinue using these headsets if any audible alarms or environmental sounds cannot be discerned while wearing a noise cancelling headset.
The pilot did not report whether or not he had heard the landing gear warning horn prior to landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA023
- Event ID
- 20161017X23525
- Case number
- GAA17CA023
- 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: 624f6538f8a28bcb277e4bceed29d6b74152333005a050aedd08b13800548672; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:24:08.442Z.