ERA15LA333 · Beech E 90
Chopaire Beech E 90 · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI) to Huntsville International Airport (HSV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA333
- 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 E 90
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft E-90
- 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
- N891PC
- Operator
- Chopaire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bomar Field / Shelbyville Municipal Airport (SYI), Shelbyville, TNTo Huntsville International Airport (HSV), Huntsville, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1973)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff in day visual meteorological conditions, when the airplane was climbing through 3,000 ft mean sea level, a complete electrical failure occurred that affected electrical instrumentation and additional airplane equipment, including the landing gear. The pilot reported that he performed the electrical failure checklists and could not restore power. After additional troubleshooting with no success, he chose to divert to and land at another airport. While in the traffic pattern at his diversion airport, he attempted to lower the landing gear using the emergency landing gear extension procedures but could not confirm the landing gear were down and locked. Without any capability to communicate or confirmation that the landing gear were down, he decided to leave the airport traffic pattern and land on a nearby field to avoid airport traffic; the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, landing gear doors, engines, and propellers during the off-airport landing. The reason for the loss of electrical power could not be determined.
Examination of the cockpit revealed that the landing gear's emergency engage handle, also known as the "J" handle, was not pulled up and turned, which was one of the steps listed in the airplane flight manual for the manual landing gear extension procedure. The "J" handle engages the clutch and allows for the handle to operate the landing gear chain. Without engaging the "J" handle, the landing gear handle pumping action would not have worked, which resulted in the gear-up landing.
Probable cause
A total loss of electrical power for reasons that could not be determined and the pilot's subsequent failure to properly follow the manual landing gear extension procedures, which resulted in the landing gear not extending.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA333
- Event ID
- 20150831X33537
- Case number
- ERA15LA333
- 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, coordinates. 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: b487ba94fb2a1f36016a77cc3876d6dc8a95afc4ba89f7c4c03fb5a8e2525ec2; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:43:44.463Z.