GAA18CA438 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Great Falls International Airport (GTF) to Great Falls International Airport (GTF)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA438
- 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
Mooney M20E
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N7845V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MTTo Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1964)
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that they were conducting a "familiarization/instructional flight" in the retractable-gear airplane and that this was his first flight with the instructor.
After practicing commercial maneuvers, they entered the traffic pattern, and the instructor wanted to acquaint himself with the "Johnson bar"-style landing gear system. The "Johnson bar" (manually operated retraction/extension handle) is pulled up to extend the landing gear and pushed down to retract the landing gear. The instructor then pushed the Johnson bar down in what he thought was the landing gear extended position. The pilot added that, although he twice verified that the landing gear was extended, the airplane landed with the landing gear retracted.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The flight instructor reported that the flight was briefed as a "familiarization" flight because he was unfamiliar with the airplane. He added that the pilot had time in the airplane, and the intent was for him to become familiar with the performance and limitations of the airplane before he began conducting commercial training for the pilot. He added that he became distracted with the operation of the flaps and did not verify the landing gear position indicator lights located on the left side of the cockpit. He also added that he did not hear the gear warning horn.
The pilot and flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s incorrect use of the landing gear system and his and the pilot’s failure to ensure that the landing gear was extended, which resulted in a gear-up landing. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s unfamiliarity with the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA438
- Event ID
- 20180725X41213
- Case number
- GAA18CA438
- 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: f397488b6182b1760e7de9ce743210d6a6d50a9e58e0a353a3ab13daf435c5de; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:59:00.318Z.