GAA18CA462 · Piper PA24 250
Piper PA24 250 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (KRWL) to Compton Woodley Airport (KCPM)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA462
- 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 PA24 250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N7893P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (KRWL), Rawlins, WYTo Compton Woodley Airport (KCPM), Compton, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1962)
- 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 › 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 in the retractable landing gear-equipped airplane reported that, during the cross-country flight, the autopilot failed, and he struggled to use the sectional charts. He added that heat and wind made the flight uncomfortable, and smoke from wildland fires decreased visibility to about 5 statute miles, so he decided to land. He completed some of the GUMPS (gas [proper tank selected], undercarriage [gear down], mixture [full mix for landing], and propeller [high rpm setting]) checklist and decided not to extend the landing gear to have better control. Upon arrival at the airport, he decided to leave the landing gear retracted as he searched for the windsock on the airport, but he could not find it. Subsequently, he attempted to contact the airport on the Unicom frequency, but he later determined that he had used an incorrect frequency. He decided to land on runway 5, which he later identified was the incorrect runway given the wind direction. He forgot to extend the landing gear before landing.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the longerons and bulkheads.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear during landing. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's distraction and his failure to complete the appropriate checklist before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA462
- Event ID
- 20180730X13619
- Case number
- GAA18CA462
- 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: 73d40579ab97c7836f20a369013b545b4a94fc24928c83d55385da69d77d4872; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:01:33.340Z.