GAA17CA109 · Piper PA28R 200
Piper PA28R 200 · Accident on approach
From Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN) to Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA109
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA28R 200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N55484
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Davenport Municipal Airport (DVN), Davenport, IATo Cincinnati Municipal Airport Lunken Field (LUK), Cincinnati, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 reported that, en route on an instrument flight rules flight plan in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), the airplane began accumulating ice, and shortly thereafter, he requested a "precautionary diversion" to the nearest airport to land. The pilot further reported that he exited IMC about 1,642 ft above ground level and circled over the diversion airport for landing. He reported that he had kept the flaps and landing gear retracted "to not adversely affect lift" and forgot to extend the landing gear before landing. However, when the airplane was over the runway threshold he reduced power, which caused the auto-extend function of the landing gear system to attempt to extend the landing gear. During the landing roll, the right main and nose landing gear collapsed. The airplane gradually slid off the runway to the right.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
In the Procedures section of the Piper Arrow II Pilot's Operating Manual, it states in part:
Some aircraft are equipped with an airspeed-power sensing system (backup gear extender) which extends the landing gear under low airspeed-power conditions even though the pilot may not have selected gear down. For normal operation, the pilot should extend and retract the gear with the gear selector switch located on the instrument panel, just as he would if the backup gear extender system were not installed.
The manual also states:
The red gear warning light on the instrument panel and the horn operate simultaneously when: On aircraft equipped with the backup gear extender, when the system has lowered the landing gear and the gear selector switch is not in the down position and the throttle is not full open.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to extend the landing gear during the approach to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA109
- Event ID
- 20170110X44641
- Case number
- GAA17CA109
- 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: f692deeb87fc3a873f08c28da31961ae9ba75fe635710e7775a743c029c5c2d5; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:56:22.693Z.