GAA18CA418 · Piper PA28R 200
Ascent Aviation Piper PA28R 200 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41) to La Porte Municipal Airport (T41)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA418
- 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 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
- N7716C
- Operator
- Ascent Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41), La Porte, TXTo La Porte Municipal Airport (T41), La Porte, TX
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 private pilot reported that he was receiving commercial instruction in an airplane with retractable landing gear during a cross-country flight. He added that, while he turned the airplane from the downwind leg to the base leg of the traffic pattern for the runway, he did not perform the checklist, and the flight instructor did not verity that the landing gear were extended. The airplane touched down on the runway with the landing gear retracted.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the external longerons on the lower fuselage.
The pilot receiving instruction reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction's failure to extend the landing gear and the flight instructor's failure to ensure that the landing gear were extended during landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot receiving instruction's and instructor's failure to conduct a prelanding checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA418
- Event ID
- 20180711X41922
- Case number
- GAA18CA418
- 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: 4d35631eb85186f8dc9ac9d178a228c9c9de76bffe2f365815781b9789d8ea01; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:49:14.501Z.