Midwest Air Link Beech 58 accident
Beech 58 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Columbus Municipal Airport (BAK) to Gary/Chicago International Airport (GYY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA415
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 58
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N4199S
- Operator
- Midwest Air Link
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbus Municipal Airport (BAK), Columbus, INTo Gary/Chicago International Airport (GYY), Gary, IN
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he lowered the landing gear about 5 miles from the airport while flying an instrument approach. While on short final and as he was turning off the airplane's positioning lights so that the landing gear indicator lights would brighten, the propellers struck the runway, indicating that he likely loss situational awareness of the airplane's altitude above the runway. The airplane then skidded on its belly on the runway. The examination of the airplane revealed that the wing spar sustained substantial damage. The nose landing gear (NLG) doors sustained scraping damage consistent with the NLG being retracted upon touchdown.
During postaccident examinations, the main landing gear and NLG lowered and raised normally, and the landing gear indicator lights operated normally. The landing checklist should be accomplished after the landing gear is lowered and the airplane is in the landing configuration. While on short final, if there are doubts about the landing gear configuration, a go-around should be accomplished. Given that the pilot had not ensured that the landing gear was down, he should have conducted a go-around.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that the landing gear was down while on short final, his subsequent failure to conduct a go-around, and his loss of situational awareness of the airplane’s altitude above the runway while landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA415
- Event ID
- 20150917X51906
- Case number
- CEN15LA415
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-09-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: affb232cc656d5799e5bbcd7af78d482bbb6795c318ceca1ee424147c33b203d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:47:02.878Z.