GAA15CA124 · Beech D35
Beech D35 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Sunriver Airport (S21) to Sunriver Airport (S21)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA124
- 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 D35
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 35
- 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
- N2984B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sunriver Airport (S21), Sunriver, ORTo Sunriver Airport (S21), Sunriver, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1953)
- 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
- 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
The pilot reported that he entered the airport traffic pattern after a local sightseeing flight and began the before landing checklist. Three other aircraft announced their presence in the vicinity of the airport and the pilot turned his attention to locating the other aircraft without finishing the checklist. The pilot reported that he did not hear the gear warning horn annunciate while he was wearing his noise cancelling headset and landed with the gear retracted. A postaccident examination revealed substantial damage to the fuselage supporting structure.
After the accident, the airplane was put on jack stands and the landing gear was extended manually. The landing gear was not operated through the use of the airplane's electrical system. The pilot reported flying the airplane the previous day and the landing gear operated normally.
The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the landing gear, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage during landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's distraction from completing his before landing checklist and inability to hear the gear warning horn annunciator in his headphones.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA124
- Event ID
- 20150616X92507
- Case number
- GAA15CA124
- 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: c1f5693c842c5ec0104da8bbb837ed9e1be6401db835d0c70635db454fc5605d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:25:58.805Z.