ATL99LA086 · Beech BE-100
Beech BE-100 · Accident: wheels up landing
From Richmond International Airport (RIC) to Hickory Regional Airport (HKY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99LA086
- 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-100
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft BE-100
- 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
- N924RM
- Operator
- Carroll G. Smith · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richmond International Airport (RIC), Richmond, VATo Hickory Regional Airport (HKY)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Failure
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on approach, the pilot placed the landing-gear handle in the down position but the right main gear did not extend. All attempts to extend the right main gear failed. The pilot landed on the left main gear and the nose wheel. The right wing settled to the runway and the airplane veered off the right side of the runway and collided with a ditch. A post-accident inspection of the landing gear system by the FAA revealed that the right main gear drive shaft had been sheared, disabling the actuator. Examination of the actuator parts revealed that the ring gear was missing one tooth and the pinion gear, which meshes with the ring gear, had missing and damaged teeth. Examination of the upper and lower thrust bearings revealed that the lower thrust bearing had been installed in reverse. The type of damage the ring and pinion gears exhibited indicated that the gears were not meshing properly. A thrust bearing installed in reverse could create an interference condition between the gears.
Probable cause
The failure of the landing gear actuator due to the improper installation of the lower thrust bearing by maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99LA086
- Event ID
- 20001212X18690
- Case number
- ATL99LA086
- 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: 10c595b667c8e65edc4fc2b3e1acd92e01a3a07df025300f18c0aa3af379ff26; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:14:17.881Z.