GAA18CA148 · Harris Pierce VELOCITY XL RG
Harris Pierce VELOCITY XL RG · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26) to Mallards Landing Airport (GA04)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA148
- 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
Harris Pierce VELOCITY XL RG
- Aircraft type
- Harris Pierce VELOCITY XL RG
- 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
- N551ZL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26), Sebastian, FLTo Mallards Landing Airport (GA04), Locust Grove, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2003)
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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, his first approach to land in the airplane was a little fast and high, so he raised the gear and applied full power for the go-around. During the second approach, he was talking with a person on the ground over the radio. Subsequently, he got distracted and landed with the landing gear in the up-and-locked position.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The pilot reported in a telephone conversation with the National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge that the gear-up warning switch had been disabled.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to extend the landing gear due to his distraction by talking on the radio, which resulted in a gear-up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA148
- Event ID
- 20180216X04655
- Case number
- GAA18CA148
- 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, coordinates. 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: 8c72e9e6088b9dee0ddcd4a1de884e18433227a6a4d82d2120388e4b5cf36488; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:29:05.545Z.