MKC82IA071 · Beech F33A
Air Safety Investigator'S Beech F33A · Incident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS) to Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC82IA071
- 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
- Incident
- 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 F33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N2048Z
- Operator
- Air Safety Investigator'S
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, MOTo Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, MO
- 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
- Nose gear collapsed
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Landing gear, emergency extension assembly › Movement restricted
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Bent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WHEN THE AIRCRAFT WAS RETURNING FOR LANDING, THE PILOT SELECTED GEAR DOWN AND STATED THAT HE FELT IT EXTEND BUT COULD NOT RECALL SEEING THE GREEN GEAR DOWN LIGHTS BECAUSE HE WAS SCANNING FOR TRAFFIC. SHORTLY AFTERWARDS HE EXPERIENCED A RAPID ELECTRICAL POWER DECAY. THE PILOT SATISFIED HIMSELF THAT THE GEAR WAS LOCKED DOWN BY USING THE EMERGENCY GEAR EXTENSION SYSTEM. AFTER RECEIVING A GREEN LIGHT FROM THE TOWER, THE PILOT LANDED ON THE MAIN GEAR AND EASED THE NOSE WHEEL ONTO THE RUNWAY. AS THE NOSE WHEEL TOUCHED THE RUNWAY THE NOSE GEAR COLLAPSED AND THE PROP AND NOSE OF THE AIRPLANE STRUCK THE RUNWAY. SUBSEQUENT INSPECTION REVEALED THAT ONE DIODE IN THE ALTERNATOR AND THE STORAGE BATTERY WERE INOPERATIVE, AND THE VOLTAGE REGULATOR WAS NOT OPERATING PROPERLY. THE NOSE GEAR EXTENSION BRACE WAS FOUND BENT ENOUGH TO PREVENT THE NOSE GEAR FROM EXTENDING COMPLETELY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC82IA071
- Event ID
- 20020917X03893
- Case number
- MKC82IA071
- 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: c7c8f785fdcf30fed942d1c316ff7848668f526d9bb17ae8dcacba39b5e0133b; retrieved 2026-09-24T03:18:15.946Z.