CEN24LA026 · Piper PA-44-180
University of Illinois Piper PA-44-180 · Accident: landing gear not configured
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA026
- 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-44-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-44
- 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
- N5331N
- Operator
- University of Illinois
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 2001)
- 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 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a multi-engine instructional flight, the flight instructor simulated an engine failure at the final approach fix. The pilot receiving instruction focused on maintaining control of the airplane and neither the pilot nor the flight instructor verified that the landing gear was extended. During the landing, they realized that the landing gear was still retracted. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower fuselage. A postaccident examination of the landing gear system by a mechanic revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The instructor stated that there was nothing mechanically wrong with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to extend the landing gear before landing and the flight instructor’s inadequate supervision to ensure that the landing gear was extended.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA026
- Event ID
- 20231030193319
- Case number
- CEN24LA026
- 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, 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: 81e76020425ae91cdef624c1c2b834e34c083d7d5f1ba1059a4dd06b04c3c7e9; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:15:33.995Z.