GAA18CA531 · Piper PA44 180
Airgo Piper PA44 180 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Centralia Municipal Airport (ENL) to Centralia Municipal Airport (ENL)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA531
- 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 PA44 180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA44
- 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
- N2204X
- Operator
- Airgo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centralia Municipal Airport (ENL), Centralia, ILTo Centralia Municipal Airport (ENL), Centralia, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor in the twin-engine airplane reported that, during the second simulated single-engine failure approach, the pilot under instruction reduced the left engine power setting to 12 inches of manifold pressure, which activated the landing gear auditory warning horn. On downwind, the student performed the prelanding checks and asked the instructor if he should deploy the landing gear. The instructor told the student to delay the action and deploy the landing gear during the final landing checks because the student was struggling to maintain altitude. Shortly after turning to final, the student performed the final landing checks and provided verbal cues of completion but did not include the landing gear check.
The instructor stated that he was distracted and focused on corrections because the student was struggling to maintain altitude and the runway centerline during the final approach. The instructor did not verify that the gear was extended. During the landing flare, the instructor realized that the landing gear was not extended, and he immediately took the controls. He leveled the airplane and landed on the runway with the gear retracted.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engines.
The instructor 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 verify that the landing gear was extended before landing. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action and distraction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA531
- Event ID
- 20180905X85852
- Case number
- GAA18CA531
- 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: d676b348ebd83ad6de7d04c570099c6bbcb8279f67d345abc1b218d930f32b72; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:12:42.524Z.