ERA15LA249 · Beech B 55
Beech B 55 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP) to St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA249
- 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 B 55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft B-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
- N216RW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP), Panama City, FLTo St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), Clearwater, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1976)
- 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 collapse
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after receiving clearance to land, he completed the before landing checklist. He added that, during the touchdown, the landing gear collapsed. According to photographs provided by the airport authority, the airplane came to rest on its belly with the right main and nose landing gears collapsed and the left main landing gear partially extended.
Postaccident examination of the landing gear system revealed that the outer sidewall of each main landing gear tire exhibited scuff marks and that the main landing gear door was scraped. Further examination revealed that both of the main landing gear extension rods were bent at the assembly actuator and that the nose landing gear extension/retraction rod was fractured. This evidence is consistent with a landing attempt with the landing gear in transit rather than fully extended as reported by the pilot. No preimpact mechanical abnormalities were noted with the landing gear system that would have precluded normal operation.
The recorded weather at the time of the accident indicated that thunderstorms existed near the airport, and photographs taken shortly after the accident show thunderstorms at the airport. Therefore, it is possible that the pilot was distracted by the approaching thunderstorm, which led to his completing the before landing checklist too late during the approach for the landing gear to fully extend before landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed completion of the before landing checklist, including the extension of the landing gear, during an approaching thunderstorm, which resulted in a landing with the landing gear in transit and the subsequent collapse of the landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA249
- Event ID
- 20150624X55528
- Case number
- ERA15LA249
- 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: f837d363170ae341ac84b00f8ed9b75d118d32fea8a074e8ec22729d8aeb3402; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:27:18.447Z.