WPR22LA249 · Piper PA-32R-301T
Piper PA-32R-301T · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA249
- 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 PA-32R-301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N4383D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), San Fernando, CATo Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL), Red Bluff, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 collapse
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the retractable gear airplane reported that, while conducting a practice instrument approach, he felt the gear go down and thought that he saw three green landing gear lights, and no gear unsafe indicator light. The main landing gear touched down and the nose dropped down lower than normal. The propeller struck the ground and the left main gear collapsed. The airplane received substantial damage to the left aileron. According to the pilot, a mechanic discovered the landing gear motor circuit breaker had popped, which disabled the landing gear from fully extending and lock in the down position and disabled the warning light system. Once the circuit breaker was reset, the landing gear functioned normally.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to detect the tripped landing gear motor circuit breaker, which prevented the gear from fully locking in the down position, and subsequent collapse during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA249
- Event ID
- 20220712105460
- Case number
- WPR22LA249
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2022-06-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c4d04c54040f5b9fe91e9e84c347f56f15e3aab667df9cd49e4fae71582e0ead; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:26:57.451Z.