CEN21LA065 · Piper PA32R 301T
Piper PA32R 301T · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA065
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 PA32R 301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA32
- 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
- N4187H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2000)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a night instructional flight, the pilot receiving instruction and flight instructor noticed the battery warning light illuminate. The ammeter showed that the battery was not charging and indicated 24 volts. They checked the circuit breakers, the alternator switch, and the master switch; all appeared normal and/or in the ON position. They elected to return to the departure airport. Before landing, the pilot receiving instruction lowered the landing gear handle and advised that the landing gear was down; all the lights flickered, and the instrument panel went dark. During landing, the flight instructor noticed that the propeller had stopped and heard the sound of grinding, then realized that the landing gear was retracted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the alternator drive belt had failed and was found loose in the engine compartment.
Probable cause
The failure of the alternator drive belt, which resulted in insufficient electrical power to extend the landing gear and a subsequent gear-up landing. .
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA065
- Event ID
- 20201124102334
- Case number
- CEN21LA065
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-11-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 187f8646562d7274d8491941654d1d02f5f99ec4456c375f0007db641e576210; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:25:36.430Z.