ERA24LA049 · Beech A36
Beech A36 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Valdosta Regional Airport (VLD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA049
- 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 A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N94EM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Chamblee, GATo Valdosta Regional Airport (VLD), Valdosta, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1982)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during the landing flare he realized that he forgot to extend the landing gear and determined it was too late to go around. The underside of the airplane’s fuselage settled onto the runway and skidded down the asphalt, resulting in substantial damage to the structure of the fuselage. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions that would have prevented normal operation of the airplane. The airplane was equipped with a landing gear position warning horn that was designed to sound when the throttle lever was pulled back for landing. The pilot reported that he did not specifically remember hearing the warning horn during the landing flare; however, he stated he might have mistaken the landing gear warning horn for the stall warning horn as he was expecting to hear the stall warning during the landing flare. The pilot reported that when he went back to the airplane after the accident and powered up the airplane’s electrical system, the landing gear warning horn operated normally.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to extend the landing gear before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA049
- Event ID
- 20231127193428
- Case number
- ERA24LA049
- 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, 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: 8dfb863674d5381850e0555b5cf9e15ad8180973197972ea434e311cf6eb7ed6; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:19:12.102Z.