ATL99FA021 · Beech BE-55B
Beech BE-55B · Accident: wheels up landing
From 4A7 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99FA021
- 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 BE-55B
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-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
- N21MJ
- Operator
- Robert L. West · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4A7To not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not used
- Pilot in command › Gear extension, not obtained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he had completed approximately one hour and forty-five minutes of training, and was returning to the local pattern at Tara Field. On final approach, the pilot executed S-turns to maintain separation from the other aircraft that was in the same traffic pattern. According to the pilot, 'The normal landing checklist was used up to the point of lowering the landing gear. However, due to the concerted effort to maintain the separation from the Cessna (another airplane in the traffic pattern), balance of the checklist was, obviously, not accomplished.' During the post-accident examination of the airframe, the landing gear transmission assembly showed a typical retraction position. The wheel examination also showed that the respective landing wheel was up and locked. The wreckage examination failed to disclose a mechanical malfunction. No mechanical problems with the airplane were reported by the pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to use the landing checklist that resulted in the wheels-up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99FA021
- Event ID
- 20001211X11361
- Case number
- ATL99FA021
- 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: 16e3d0e7898755e990b2a47e1b006463af1199903a3b3b58706aa4cd0af5f973; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:20:01.410Z.