CEN16LA336 · Beech E-55
Cobra Kai Beech E-55 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Kickapoo Downtown Airport (CWC) to Wichita Falls Municipal Airport / Sheppard Air Force Base (SPS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA336
- 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-55
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft E-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
- N855T
- Operator
- Cobra Kai
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kickapoo Downtown Airport (CWC), Wichita Falls, TXTo Wichita Falls Municipal Airport / Sheppard Air Force Base (SPS), Wichita Falls, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 43 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
- 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 handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that, after the landing gear handle was placed in the gear-down position, he and the student pilot noticed electrical smoke and fumes but no fire. Although they restored electrical power, they were unable to fully extend the landing gear, which resulted in a gear-up landing.
Postaccident examination of the main landing gear retraction actuator assembly revealed a broken snap ring within the manual crank extension housing, which allowed the actuator worm gear to reposition itself beyond the actuator worm sector travel limits. A review of the airplane's maintenance records found no record showing that the landing gear actuator assembly had been repaired/overhauled in accordance with the airplane maintenance manual. According to the maintenance manual, the actuator assembly is to be overhauled or replaced every 2,000 hours for gray- or green-colored assemblies. The assembly that was examined was green. The airplane had a total time of 6,184.5 hours. Given the condition of the landing gear actuator assembly, the operator should have been overhauled or replaced the actuator assembly in accordance with the manual.
Probable cause
The failure of the landing gear assembly snap ring, which prevented the pilot from being able to extend the landing gear and resulted in a gear-up landing. Also causal was the lack of the assembly's overhaul in accordance with the airplane maintenance manual.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA336
- Event ID
- 20160829X93333
- Case number
- CEN16LA336
- 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: 8ac997f6990afbc5ef766fb245de6a083c147b4b9775bb070a4ca86cef81d7dd; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:12:32.014Z.