LAX01LA148
2001-04-08 · Chino, California, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport CNO
Current FAA registration · N6240P
- Make / Model
- PIPER PA-24-250
- Year of manufacture
- 1959 · 42 years old at event
- Engine
- LYCOMING 0-540 SERIES (250 hp)
- Seats / Engines
- 4 seats · 1 engine
- Last airworthiness date
- 19590826
- ADS-B equipped
- Yes — Mode-S A8277F
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear. A factor was the pilot's failure to use the landing checklist.
Factual narrative
On April 8, 2001, about 1730 hours Pacific daylight time, a Piper PA-24-250, N6240P, sustained substantial damage when it made a wheels up landing on runway 26 at Chino, California. The commercial pilot/owner was operating the airplane under the provisions of 14 CFR Part 91. The pilot, the sole occupant, was not injured. The personal flight departed Corona, California, about 1720. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed and no flight plan had been filed. This occurrence was upgraded to an accident on April 19, 2001, after an inspection revealed damage to structural airframe components. The Federal Aviation Administration accident coordinator interviewed the pilot. The pilot said he initiated a go-around on his first attempted landing because the runway wasn't clear. He forgot that he raised his landing gear. He was wearing a new noise attenuating headset that changed the sounds he normally heard when flying his airplane. He did not recognize the gear warning horn during the accident landing. He recalled that the gear warning horn was still sounding as he removed his headset. The airplane landed with the landing gear retracted. The pilot said he initiated a go-around on his first attempted landing because the runway wasn't clear. He forgot that he raised his landing gear. He was wearing a new noise attenuating headset that changed the sounds he normally heard when flying his airplane. He did not recognize the gear warning horn during the accident landing. He recalled that the gear warning horn was still sounding as he removed his headset. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2001_LAX01LA148.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.
- TallyAero Live Wire Aviation press
- NTSB CAROL Agency ↗
- NTSB Docket Agency ↗
- Aviation Safety Network Aviation press ↗
- Kathryn's Report Aviation press ↗
- Aviation Herald Aviation press ↗
- AVweb Aviation press ↗
- Pilots of America Community ↗
- Reddit /r/flying Community ↗
- FlightAware Aviation press ↗
- AOPA accident database Aviation press ↗
- Google News News ↗
- DuckDuckGo News ↗
Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (go-around). All research papers
- NASA NTRS 2025 · Conference Paper A Training Study to Improve Monitoring During A Go-Around
As part of an FAA program to improve go-around (GA) safety, we were asked to determine if we could improve the performance of the Pilot Monitoring (PM) during a GA maneuver.
- Flight Safety Foundation 2024 · FSF / AeroSafety World Go-Around Safety Forum Findings
Foundation Go-Around Safety Forum technical findings — examines why pilots fail to execute go-arounds when criteria are met (stabilized approach gate not met, energy state out of envelope, traffic con…
- Semantic Scholar 2022 · Article (Journal of Safety Research) Go-around accidents and general aviation safety.
INTRODUCTION Changes in General Aviation (GA) accident rates, specifically in the go-around phase, are examined by comparing the number of accidents, the proportion of fatal accidents, and the proport…
- Semantic Scholar 2021 · Article (Aerospace) Classification and Analysis of Go-Arounds in Commercial Aviation Using ADS-B Data
Go-arounds are a necessary aspect of commercial aviation and are conducted after a landing attempt has been aborted. It is necessary to conduct go-arounds in the safest possible manner, as go-arounds …
- NASA NTRS 2021 · Accepted Manuscript (Version with final changes) Go-Around Criteria Refinement for Transport Category Aircraft
Presently, airline pilots are trained to go around if, when lower than 500 ft above the ground, they are outside of a handful of parameters such as airspeed, position, and rate of descent.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Conference Paper Validation of Proposed Go-Around Criteria Under Various Environmental Conditions
This paper evaluates the effects of environmental conditions on touchdown performance under varying approach states and validates proposed go-around criteria developed using data from a previously con…