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Atlas / NTSB / ERA24LA218

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ERA24LA218

2024-05-03 Conway, South Carolina, United States Airport · HYW None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N3777

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

MOONEY M20K

Year of manufacture

1985 · 39 years old at event

Seats / Engines

4 seats · 1 engine

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A45119

Registrant of record

WINGS OF EAGLES

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s failure to extend the landing gear before landing.

Factual narrative

The airplane had just undergone an annual inspection and the pilot was returning to the airport after conducting a post-maintenance flight test. The pilot stated that he made a normal approach to land with both the flaps and landing gear extended. He further described that upon landing, the airplane settled to the runway, and skidded to a stop resulting in substantial damage to the lower fuselage. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed minor damage to the nose landing gear door and no damage to the main landing gear doors. The landing gear was subsequently cycled several times using both normal and emergency methods. No evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures were noted that would have precluded normal operation of the landing gear system. Based on this information, it is most likely that the pilot landed the airplane with the landing gear still retracted. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Aircraft-Aircraft systems-Landing gear system-Gear extension and retract sys-Not used/operated
  • Personnel issues-Action/decision-Action-Forgotten action/omission-Pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2024_ERA24LA218.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (maintenance). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗