Freight Runners Beech B-99 accident
Beech B-99 · Accident: landing gear collapse while taxiing
From Baraboo Wisconsin Dells Regional Airport (DLL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA188
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 B-99
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft B-99
- 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
- N699CZ
- Operator
- Freight Runners
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baraboo Wisconsin Dells Regional Airport (DLL), Baraboo, WITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported no difficulties during the flight or landing. While taxing the airplane after landing, the green right landing gear position indicator light extinguished, and the red gear handle light illuminated. The pilot glanced over to the circuit breaker panel and noted that the landing gear control circuit breaker had tripped. After parking the airplane for refueling, he notified his company maintenance control group about the issue and was advised to not reposition the airplane after refueling. The pilot waited about 20 minutes for weather to clear before exiting the airplane. As the pilot prepared to exit, the right main landing gear collapsed and the airplane’s right wing impacted the ground, resulting in substantial damage. Metallurgical examination of the separated fracture surface on the right landing gear drag leg support fitting revealed an area of fatigue in a machined radius adjacent to the center lug of the drag leg support. The remainder of the fracture exhibited features consistent with overload failure. An additional crack was found in the machined radius on the opposite side of the center lug. This portion of the part had not completely separated. Exposure of the crack revealed the existence of a fatigue crack in about the same area as the first crack, with overload signatures outside of the fatigue area. The airplane maintenance manual indicated that the subject part was to be cleaned and visually inspected at least every 7,500 cycles or every 5 years, whichever occurred first. Maintenance records indicated that the part had accumulated 762 cycles since the most recent inspection 23 months before the accident. After the accident, the operator examined the drag leg support fittings on their fleet of 9 other airplanes of the same model. Of the 18 fittings examined, 14 were found to be cracked. Of the 14 cracked fittings, 11 could only be detected using dye penetrant inspection, and could not be detected solely by visual inspection.
Probable cause
A right main landing gear collapse due to fatigue failure of the landing gear drag leg support fitting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA188
- Event ID
- 20220503105033
- Case number
- CEN22LA188
- 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, cause areas. 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: 6ee0beae05a9620956aaa55dfa6e5372eb634541b3cc629d3f80e7c0311d09fe; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:11:54.949Z.