ERA22LA138 · Piper PA-30
Century Air Piper PA-30 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) on approach
From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA138
- 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
- 0
- 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 PA-30
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-30
- 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
- N7943Y
- Operator
- Century Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV), Shirley, NYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
Prior to landing during the commercial multi-engine checkride flight, the pilot performed the flight school’s landing checklist as he flew s-turns on the final approach leg to slow for traffic ahead. The pilot reported that “during the unstable approach my attention was divided between obliging the DPE’s (designated pilot examiner) advisements, slower traffic ahead of us, traffic behind, and listening (for a) possibl(e)…go-around (instruction) due to poor spacing.” He stated that he did not see the amber gear-up light illuminate and did not hear the landing gear warning horn. The pilot further reported that during the approach, the DPE advised him to not “reduce the power that much, we’re going to get behind the power curve and sink”, which he heeded. The airplane landed with the landing gear retracted, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage.
A post-accident examination of the airplane revealed that the landing gear motor circuit breaker was open. During recovery of the airplane from the runway, a mechanic reset the circuit breaker, after which the landing gear operated normally. Subsequent testing of the landing gear revealed that the landing gear warning horn and the green landing gear down and locked indicator light functioned normally. According to the airplane owner’s handbook, the amber light should flash when power is reduced on one engine with the landing gear up. The landing gear warning horn should sound when power is reduced on both engines below about 12 inches of manifold pressure if the landing gear is not down and locked. Given the pilot’s report of landing with some engine power applied, the power setting may have been above the threshold to activate the landing gear warning horn.
Another pilot reported that a similar event occurred about two months prior to the accident. During an approach, when he moved the landing gear selector to the down position, there was no noise, and the landing gear down and locked indicator light did not illuminate. He performed a go around, and then discovered that the landing gear motor circuit breaker was open. He reset the circuit breaker and lowered the landing gear, which operated normally thereafter.
Probable cause
The flight crew’s failure to verify the landing gear position prior to landing. Contributing to the accident was an overload in the landing gear motor electrical circuit which resulted in the circuit breaker opening, preventing the landing gear from extending.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA138
- Event ID
- 20220301104707
- Case number
- ERA22LA138
- 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, cause areas. 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: aabeb558b714093a2602afa25f571e44d9307083dc45b6b1e6e42b4b84eff103; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:00:08.715Z.