SEA00LA066 · Beech A200
Beech A200 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI) to Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport (PUW)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA066
- 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 A200
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 200
- 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
- N258AG
- Operator
- Wild Angels
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI)To Pullman-Moscow Regional Airport (PUW), Pullman, WA
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Checklist, not followed
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that very shortly after takeoff, both DC generator lights illuminated. He stated he tried to reset the generators but was unsuccessful. The aircraft experienced a total electrical failure shortly thereafter. The pilot returned to the departure airport, manually lowering the gear (by pumping a handle that drives a mechanical extension mechanism) since normal electrical gear extension was not available. The pilot stated he pumped the manual extension handle until he felt a drop in resistance, at which point he assumed the gear was down-and-locked. The airplane's left main landing gear collapsed during landing. The pilot, who had 26 total hours in make and model of which 11 was as pilot-in-command, could not remember placing the engine ignition/start switches from ON to OFF after starting the engines as specified by the checklist. Each of the airplane's engines is equipped with a DC electric starter/generator; with the engine ignition/start switches in the ON position, these devices function as starter motors driven by ground power or the aircraft battery. In post-accident examinations, the battery was found discharged but once it was recharged and reinstalled in the aircraft, investigators were able to start one of the aircraft's engines on battery power and bring a generator on line with no electrical power distribution anomalies noted. The GENERATOR INOPERATIVE emergency procedure in the aircraft's FAA-approved Airplane Flight Manual (AFM) does not contain a step for checking the engine ignition/start switches in the OFF position prior to attempting generator reset, and the AFM LANDING GEAR MANUAL EXTENSION procedure does not contain information on how long to pump the manual extension handle for a down-and-locked condition in the event the green GEAR DOWN lights do not illuminate (as in an electrical failure condition.)
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly follow pre-takeoff checklists (resulting in the engine starters remaining engaged after engine start, generators not being activated, discharge of the aircraft battery and consequent total electrical failure during flight with associated disabling of normal landing gear extension capability), and his subsequent failure to properly perform a manual landing gear extension resulting in a landing with the gear not down-and-locked. Factors included: the pilot's lack of experience in type, steps not listed in the manufacturer's Airplane Flight Manual (AFM) GENERATOR INOPERATIVE procedure, conditions not listed in the manufacturer's AFM MANUAL LANDING GEAR EXTENSION procedure; and the FAA's inadequate approval of both of these procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA066
- Event ID
- 20001212X20918
- Case number
- SEA00LA066
- 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: 8615cf51c11c8878f1054613581dc13d4a326e240d86d0fea83fc45191dc2d0c; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:59:37.350Z.