LAX00LA218 · Beech 95
Sheble Aviation Beech 95 · Accident: gear retraction on ground during takeoff
From Sun Valley Airport (A20) to Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA218
- 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 95
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 95
- 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
- N133PW
- Operator
- Sheble Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sun Valley Airport (A20), Sun Valley, AZTo Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZ
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Gear retraction on ground
- 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
- Dual student › Gear retraction, premature
- Dual student › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
All three landing gear retracted immediately prior to rotation and the airplane settled back to the runway. The left wingtip struck the runway and the airplane cartwheeled, running into a rising dirt embankment, and coming to rest on the side of the runway. In his written statement, the flight instructor reported that the nose gear collapsed during the takeoff ground roll. He had no further explanation of the event. According to a pilot-rated witness, the airplane was on the takeoff ground roll when all three landing gear retracted prior to rotation, and the airplane settled back to the runway. The witness went to the assistance of the airplane occupants and spoke to the flight instructor. According to the witness, the instructor said that the student might have placed the landing gear selector switch in the up position instead of the flaps after the previous landing.
Probable cause
The certified flight instructor's (pilot-in-command) inadequate supervision of his dual student, who prematurely retracted the landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA218
- Event ID
- 20001212X21260
- Case number
- LAX00LA218
- 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: fad53f5389409ebc799c897e43304646f8fd8714108d4019544d0ec07c63dfdd; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:49:55.844Z.