ERA26LA071 · Beech D95A
Sanders Aviation Beech D95A · Accident: landing gear not configured
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA071
- 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 D95A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 95
- 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
- N95DJ
- Operator
- Sanders Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1963)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that during the instructional flight he and the pilot receiving instruction had just completed a simulated single-engine approach to a landing. During this approach, the right engine throttle was reduced to idle to simulate the failed engine and the landing gear position warning horn circuit breaker was pulled to silence the horn. After landing without incident, the crew departed with the intention of practicing short field landings. The flight instructor reported being distracted by incoming traffic, having to execute a 360º turn for spacing, and not completing the before landing checks using the printed checklist. The landing gear warning horn was not audible due to the circuit breaker not being reset and the landing gear lever was never selected to the down position prior to touchdown. The airplane contacted the runway with the landing gear retracted resulting in substantial damage to the lower fuselage. The flight instructor reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilots’ failure to ensure that the airplane’s landing gear was extended before landing. Contributing was the flight instructor’s inadequate supervision during the landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA071
- Event ID
- 20251222202190
- Case number
- ERA26LA071
- 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: c4802fbe82082d9d8b112483870ad0bd6142c9b2f6c73f16e461d6049c14c8f9; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:37:10.550Z.