SEA08LA040 · Beech 95-B55
Beech 95-B55 · Accident: hard landing
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08LA040
- 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-B55
- 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
- N1831L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo not recorded
- 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
- Hard 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Porpoise/pilot-induced oscillation, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the nosewheel settled onto the runway during landing, the pilot felt a strong vibration in the rudder pedals and he abruptly applied backpressure on the control yoke and the airplane became airborne again. As the pilot relieved the backpressure on the control yoke, the airplane landed on the nosewheel and started to porpoise. After four oscillations, the airplane slowed to a point where the pilot was able to initiate a turn onto a taxiway. As the airplane exited the runway, the nose of the airplane settled onto the asphalt surface. Examination of the airplane revealed that the fuselage was buckled along the cabin area above the left and right wing roots. The nosewheel was found separated from the piston and fork assembly. No anomalies were noted with the flight control system or nose wheel fork and strut assembly. Examination of the nosewheel axel and rim fractures disclosed features and deformation that were consistent with overstress fractures and no evidence of preexisting cracks was observed. The inner race and rolling elements of the left bearing were displaced to the left and bent in the area of the displacement. The upper surface of the axle exhibited a circumferential crack at the location corresponding to the right edge of the left bearing inner race. An impact mark was observed on the upper surface of the axle consistent with heavy contact to the left bearing inner race.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper flare resulting in a porpoise and hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08LA040
- Event ID
- 20071206X01908
- Case number
- SEA08LA040
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-11-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 78be05d46a268a4b5d078b194213795cdf62c8bbaf64710d29af3d01d996c5a4; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:15:56.761Z.