CEN23LA407 · Beech 95-B55 (T42A)
Rocky Mountain Aviation Beech 95-B55 (T42A) · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA407
- 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
- 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 95-B55 (T42A)
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 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
- N2KM
- Operator
- Rocky Mountain Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), Broomfield, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 50 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
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had conducted a practice instrument approach to a landing and chose to remain in the traffic pattern for a second landing in dusk light conditions. While he was on final approach, he was performing the pre-landing checklist (gas, undercarriage, mixture, props) when he was distracted “by what appeared to be another aircraft ahead of me…” However, he could not locate the object again after visually scanning the traffic pattern. During the landing, he heard the main wheels briefly on the runway surface immediately followed by the sound of the airplane’s lower fuselage contacting the runway surface. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower fuselage. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the exterior of the landing gear doors, along with the lower fuselage skin and underlying structure, had substantial abrasion damage with no damage to the landing gear structure or linkages. The landing gear operated normally during multiple gear retraction and extension tests. However, during the landing gear test, the cockpit landing gear warning system failed to sound an audible warning for reasons that could not be determined. Based on available information, it is likely that the pilot failed to extend the airplane’s landing gear before touchdown on the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to extend the landing gear. Contributing to the accident was a malfunction of the landing gear warning horn for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA407
- Event ID
- 20230911193043
- Case number
- CEN23LA407
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-08-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e7ebef06f366745ee0473b72b871fab3593dd9ef80b770cbf5a8936b0b894875; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:06:38.337Z.