ERA20LA192 · Beech F90 UNDESIGNAT
Empire Equipment Beech F90 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during initial climb
From McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS) to Hilton Head Airport (HXD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA192
- 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 F90 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 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
- N960V
- Operator
- Empire Equipment
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS), Knoxville, TNTo Hilton Head Airport (HXD), Hilton Head Island, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the pilot moved the landing gear handle to the retract position, and the red “gear unsafe” light illuminated. The pilot conducted a low-altitude approach so that the tower controller could visually confirm the condition of the landing gear; the tower controller reported that the nose landing gear appeared “slanted.” The pilot then performed the unsafe gear checklist and attempted to manually lower the landing gear, but the red gear unsafe light remained illuminated. During a subsequent low-altitude approach, the controller indicated that the main gear appeared down but that the nose gear did not appear to be fully down and locked. The pilot performed a precautionary landing, and, shortly after touchdown, the main and nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane skidded to a stop.
Examination of the left main landing gear revealed that the landing gear scissors had fractured at the bolt attachment area and that the landing gear was twisted sideways and jammed against the main gear doors. The landing gear circuit breaker that controlled the landing gear motor had popped. The airplane manufacturer’s landing gear manual extension procedure required the emergency gear selector handle to be in the STOP detent. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the handle was not placed in the STOP detent; however, it could not be determined, from the available evidence for this investigation, if the landing gear manual extension procedure could have been successfully accomplished with the landing gear system failure that occurred during the accident flight.
Probable cause
A failure of the left main landing gear scissors, which resulted in a landing gear collapse following a precautionary landing with the landing gear in an intermediate position..
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA192
- Event ID
- 20200518X25309
- Case number
- ERA20LA192
- 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: 1d444b10581d5c4c2dbc84cdaf9befefffeabb002ad6d4d18f652bcc4d519565; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:38:14.835Z.