CHI98LA051 · Beech E55
Beech E55 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC) to Gardner Municipal Airport (K34)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA051
- 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 E55 Possible conflict
- 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
- N3914A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC), Lawrence, KSTo Gardner Municipal Airport (K34)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Gear retraction › Inadvertent
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While practicing crosswind touch-and-go landings, the airplane touched down left of the centerline near the displaced threshold and bounced. The pilot added and removed power to let the airplane settle to the runway. The landing gear retracted during this period, and the left propeller struck the runway. The pilot added full power and rotated, at which time, the right propeller contacted the runway. With the engine running rough, the airplane touched down again, slid off the runway, and contacted a parked airplane. The pilot reported he did not touch the landing gear selector during the landing, nor did he hear a warning horn. Postaccident inspection of the landing gear system revealed that it, along with the gear warning system, functioned normally.
Probable cause
the inadvertant landing gear retraction, which occurred due to undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA051
- Event ID
- 20001208X09160
- Case number
- CHI98LA051
- 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: investigation status. 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: ae02fab90947c90d12addb7b9fe1f52b547b4726ece04b1d53bd12748fea5727; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:10:35.032Z.