ERA24LA193 · Beech E-55
Beech E-55 · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (TRI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA193
- 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 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
- N333HE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (TRI), Kingsport, TNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1976)
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After an instrument flight rules cross-country flight, the pilot received multiple radar vectors from air traffic control for traffic and after mis-identifying the destination airport for a visual approach. He then had difficulty identifying the runway while looking toward the setting sun and setting up the GPS to identify a 2-mile final approach to the runway. On final approach, he was paying close attention to departing traffic on the landing runway and stated that he configured the airplane for landing but neglected to lower the landing gear. He heard the landing gear position warning horn and realized that he had forgotten to extend the landing gear when the airplane settled onto the runway. The airplane skidded down the asphalt, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
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 ERA24LA193
- Event ID
- 20240425194149
- Case number
- ERA24LA193
- 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: 47bbc81a7ff71785933077027ffd2eb982c86088c722e203f22ef7191779a1b3; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:42:01.602Z.