ERA11CA076 · Beech 95-C55
Beech 95-C55 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Unknown to Williston Municipal Airport (X60)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA076
- 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
- N677Z
- Operator
- Charles Graper
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From UnknownTo Williston Municipal Airport (X60), Williston, FL
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Landing gear not configured
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while the airplane was on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, he lowered the landing gear handle and thought he saw the green landing gear indicator lights illuminate. He then became distracted and did not check the landing gear lights again. The airplane touched down with the landing gear retracted, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot stated that the accident was a mistake and that his own fatigue or stress may have been an issue. Examination of the airplane revealed that the landing gear handle was in the "down" position, the landing gear indicator lights were functioning, and that the landing gear motor circuit breaker had been tripped. The circuit breaker was reset and the landing gear was cycled six times with no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies noted.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly configure and confirm the position of the landing gear prior to landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA076
- Event ID
- 20101202X23228
- Case number
- ERA11CA076
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: af2335d0d3eb35b146672c074fa0bd893d044ac8d6c4d22240c299ad04c02e28; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:35:51.046Z.