DEN03LA029 · Beech F33A
Beech F33A · Accident: wheels up landing
From Hutchinson County Airport (BGD) to Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA029
- 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
- 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
- N1592W
- Operator
- Robert W. Dunavant · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hutchinson County Airport (BGD), Borger, TXTo Durango La Plata County Airport (DRO), Durango, CO
- 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said made a crosswind approach for the runway. He said he entered a gradual climb to slow his airplane down enough to lower the landing gear, and then hit the gear switch thinking he had engaged it. The pilot turned on downwind until the other traffic was clear, and then subsequently turned on to base and final. The pilot said he did not realize there was a problem until he struck the runway. The airplane landed with the gear fully retracted damaging the bottom fuselage, flaps, and propeller. An examination of the airplane revealed no systems anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to extend the landing gear. A contributing factor is the pilot's failure to follow the checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA029
- Event ID
- 20030107X00025
- Case number
- DEN03LA029
- 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, coordinates. 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: d99541f61a491174a67b865011b3b6d2519b3406a0bc0c6301039fce0b8b233b; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:45:42.083Z.