CEN26LA089 · Piper PA24 250
Piper PA24 250 · Accident: landing gear collapse
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA089
- 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 PA24 250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA24
- 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
- N7085P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1961)
- 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 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that upon runway contact, the airplane began to pull to the right and not slowing down like it normally would. The pilot attempted to keep the aircraft on the runway centerline by applying full left rudder. Subsequently, the pilot lost directional control as the airplane spun perpendicular to the runway. The nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane came to rest on the runway. The pilot reported that he was not sure if the green gear down indicator lights were illuminated prior to landing. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower skins, stringers, and box beams on the fuselage. After the airplane was recovered from the runway, the pilot noticed the landing gear circuit breaker was tripped. Upon resetting the circuit breaker, the landing gear lowered and locked in the down position. Postaccident examination did not reveal why the circuit breaker had tripped.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure the landing gear was down and locked before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA089
- Event ID
- 20260112202285
- Case number
- CEN26LA089
- 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: 00ef845f08bfec2bd0e29d9d0459535305b20f5b967f5ab89b876afe4106a872; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:40:04.470Z.