United Express Beech 1900D accident
Beech 1900D · Accident: wheels up landing
From Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport (SPI) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01FA084
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Airline
- 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 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N97UX
- Operator
- United Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport (SPI), Springfield, ILTo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, IL
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Flightcrew › Checklist, not complied with
- Flightcrew › Wheels up landing, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The crew unintentionally landed the airplane with the landing gear in the fully retracted position. The crew did not lower the landing gear or check the landing gear position as required on the flaps-up landing checklist, the normal landing checklist, and final checklist. According to the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), the landing gear unsafe warning horn did not sound during the entire recorded portion of the accident flight. The minimum equipment list (MEL) requires the installation of a placard that prohibits the silencing of the landing gear warning horn when the flap system is inoperative. The accident airplane had a placard that stated, "Do not silence gear warning horn." No anomalies were found with the landing gear system including the landing gear unsafe warning horn, the red landing gear control handle lighting, and the landing gear position lights. The flap system and ground proximity warning system (GPWS) were inoperative for the accident flight and were listed on the MEL as items that could be inoperative for revenue flight.
Probable cause
The flightcrew not lowering the landing gear and/or verifying the landing gear position as required by three separate checklists, which resulted in an inadvertent gear-up landing. A factor to the accident was the flightcrew not complying with the required minimum equipment list placard that prohibited the silencing of the landing gear warning horn.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01FA084
- Event ID
- 20010214X00449
- Case number
- CHI01FA084
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: b38b409dc739492dfdfd6c763756fffa56e86c876db3406801abadeaf5210933; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:16:44.189Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N97UX; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.