ERA26LA191 · Beech F33A
Beech F33A · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA191
- 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 F33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N85WM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1981)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after practicing instrument approaches with the flight instructor, they were returning to the airport. While in the traffic pattern, the pilot lowered the flaps with no problems noted, but as he attempted to lower the landing gear, the airplane lost electrical power. The pilot performed a low pass of the airport and reported that individuals on the ground confirmed that the landing gear were down, but they were unsure if they were in the locked position. The pilot then attempted to lower the landing gear with the hand crank, and he managed to make about 20 total turns (of about 50 normally needed to fully extend the landing gear) before he was unable to turn the crank any further. During the subsequent landing, the nose landing gear collapsed and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the lower fuselage. Postaccident examination flight data recovered from avionics onboard the airplane revealed that shortly after departing on the accident flight, current parameter indicated a discharge from the battery for the remainder of the flight and electrical bus voltage began to slowly decrease. A postaccident examination and functional test of the alternator revealed that the case halves of the alternator had vibrated apart and that the alternator had was not functioning. It was disassembled and the stator leads were found to be broken at the rectifier attachment point.
Probable cause
A loss of electrical power as a result of broken stator leads within the alternator, which resulted in the pilot’s inability to extend the airplane’s landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA191
- Event ID
- 20260428202902
- Case number
- ERA26LA191
- 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: dbcab3c1295edb1b5bbe32b27fa56c32d24c9f01d8414be54d992eeb0c5050a3; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:20:39.862Z.