CEN18LA048 · Piper PA 31-310 UNDESIGNAT
Luftladder Piper PA 31-310 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ) to Clark Regional Airport (JVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA048
- 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 31-310 UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N722CF
- Operator
- Luftladder
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ), Wellsville, NYTo Clark Regional Airport (JVY), Jeffersonville, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 44 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When the airplane was about 5 miles from the airport, the commercial pilot lowered the landing gear and noted that the right main landing gear (MLG) was slow to extend, but within a few seconds, all three gear down indicator lights illuminated. The airplane descended normally, and when it was above the runway about to flare, the right MLG indicator light extinguished. The pilot initiated a go-around, increased engine power, pitched for climb, and retracted the MLG and flaps. The airplane likely settled after the flaps were retracted, and the pilot heard a noise similar to a propeller blade contacting something. The pilot decided to abort the go-around and landed the airplane straight ahead. The airplane came to a stop on the runway with the MLG retracted.
Postaccident MLG retraction tests were performed satisfactorily, and no defects were noted. Based on the available information, the reason that the right MLG did not fully extend and lock could not be determined.
Probable cause
The right main landing gear’s failure to fully extend for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident testing revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA048
- Event ID
- 20171206X43704
- Case number
- CEN18LA048
- 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 2017-12-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 038f4db3c05e43512114be90c304210b9eb09bd497a95ab39d41568716a70c7f; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:05:40.378Z.