ERA15LA273 · Beech 35-C33
Beech 35-C33 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Pilots Ridge Airport (03NC) to Wilmington International Airport (ILM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA273
- 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
- 0
- 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 35-C33
- 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
- N829T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pilots Ridge Airport (03NC), Carolina Beach, NCTo Wilmington International Airport (ILM), Wilmington, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1964)
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a short personal flight. According to the pilot, after takeoff, he began receiving faulty airspeed indications and requested an expedited landing from air traffic control because the airplane "did not feel right." The pilot reported that he kept the landing gear fully extended. He also reported completing the before landing checklist and stated that, during the touchdown, the landing gear "collapsed."
Postaccident examination of photographs of the airplane found that the main landing gear was partially extended and that the nose landing gear had collapsed. Postaccident examination of the landing gear system revealed that the main landing gear inner doors were in the open position and had been damaged by contact with the runway surface. Scrubbing was found on the sides of the main tires. The nose landing gear was in its wheel well, and the actuating rod was bent, indicating that the nose gear was not fully locked down when it contacted the pavement. The landing gear system circuit breaker was found tripped, which was likely the result of an electrical overload caused by the landing gear extension being physically impeded. There was no evidence of a preimpact malfunction, and a mechanic was able to manually extend the landing gear. Thus, the evidence was consistent with an attempted landing with the landing gear in transit rather than fully extended.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that the landing gear was in the down and locked position before touchdown, which resulted in a landing with the gear in transit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA273
- Event ID
- 20150721X25227
- Case number
- ERA15LA273
- 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: ab890a699aec6a1c6f36cab6660e020430fba248ff916c11d9b48160a936a00e; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:33:03.774Z.