CHI96LA144 · Beech B55B
Beech B55B · Accident: wheels up landing
From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR) to Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA144
- 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
Beech B55B
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N8496N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR), Aurora, ILTo Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK)
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Wheels up landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Gear extension, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he slowed the airplane and performed a 'GUMPS' check on base. He wrote that he 'thought the wheels were down at this point.' He said he performed another 'GUMPS' check on final. He 'flared normally and went to idle...touched down, and after 2 seconds the nose dropped, and [the airplane] began to slide.' He reported that he heard the landing gear warning horn during the flare, but thought it was the stall warning horn. He reported that when he returned to the airplane five minutes after the accident, he observed the landing gear control handle in an intermediate position between the center and bottom detent. The landing gear system functioned normally during an operational check.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to properly extend the landing gear. A factor was his failure to follow checklist procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA144
- Event ID
- 20001208X05542
- Case number
- CHI96LA144
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-04-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 23baf0aa5a1d7dd1d049efa81166f80f194c89b45f9625510d952b074b8dd8e3; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:36:26.263Z.