DEN04LA075 · Beech 95-C55
Beech 95-C55 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Telluride Regional Airport (TEX) to Sumers Airpark (GWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA075
- 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 95-C55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 55
- 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
- N282JL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Telluride Regional Airport (TEX), Telluride, COTo Sumers Airpark (GWS), Glenwood Springs, 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
- En route · 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 › Wheels up landing, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while en route to his home base, he experienced an electrical system malfunction. Due to the wind gust conditions at his home base, he elected to divert to a second airport. While on approach to the second airport, the airplane's electrical system became more erratic, which included the illumination of all warning lights on the digital exhaust gas temperature (EGT) gauge and the indication of "extreme" engine temperatures of over 1,650 degrees. Shortly thereafter, the electrical system failed. He immediately attempted to lower the flaps and landing gear, but the flaps only partially lowered. The pilot hand cranked the landing gear half way down, but because of the severe turbulence, asked his passenger to assist him while he flew the airplane. When the passenger finished, the pilot verified that the landing gear crank had "quit turning." The pilot stated that, due to the "extreme danger" of a possible engine fire, he elected not to attempt a fly-by to verify that the landing gear was extended. When he attempted to land on runway 26, he felt both propellers strike the runway. When he "cut" the power to both engines, the airplane settled onto the runway, and slid approximately 1,000 feet before coming to a stop on the grass just off the right side of the runway. The pilot realized that the passenger had inadvertently raised the landing gear, resulting in an unintentional gear-retracted landing. Later, it was determined that several fractured propeller pieces had impacted the fuselage resulting in substantial damage to several fuselage bulkheads. An examination of the airplane's electrical system, which included a 2-hour ferry flight, showed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to verify the manual extension of the landing gear resulting in an inadvertent wheels up landing. Contributing factors include the electrical systems failure for undetermined reasons, the pilot's diverted attention and the pilot's improper in-flight planning and decision making.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA075
- Event ID
- 20040615X00791
- Case number
- DEN04LA075
- 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: 907150f54d524cbab1d2cda015f6bb888d6a8c379c668c44238a0f99151e34d9; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:39:06.433Z.