LAX00LA064 · Beech 65-80
Beech 65-80 · Accident: hard landing
From Mesa Gateway Airport (IWA) to FFZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA064
- 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 65-80
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 65
- 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
- N184R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesa Gateway Airport (IWA), Phoenix, AZTo FFZ
- 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
- Hard 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 › Overload
- Unknown › Aircraft handling, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following completion of an annual inspection, the pilot took off for a local area flight. The pilot performed one takeoff and landing. Then, during the landing gear retraction process on the next takeoff, the pilot observed a cockpit indication that the left main landing gear did not normally retract. No "up lock" light illuminated. In an effort at remedying the situation, the landing gear circuit breaker was pulled. Then, the hand pump was utilized to manually extend the gear. Following this effort, only two green landing gear position lights illuminated. The pilot stated he informed the control tower that he would be landing with an unsafe gear indication. After landing and rolling between 80 and 100 feet, the left main gear collapsed. As the airplane slid to a stop it veered into a taxi light and onto the dirt clearway. An FAA inspector examined the airplane and found the left gear's actuator shaft was broken in half, and the knuckle attachment bolts had been "pulled out" of the structure. No evidence of any preexisting defect or malfunction in the gear assembly was observed. The noted evidence was consistent with the airplane having been subjected to a hard landing. However, the date(s) for the occurrence could not be determined.
Probable cause
The collapse of a main landing gear due to damage from a hard landing at an undetermined time.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA064
- Event ID
- 20001212X20271
- Case number
- LAX00LA064
- 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: d9e412f06777130191f3dd9ebc54ae2292d812c097c386e6b3a25339abba1a87; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:30:35.237Z.