A pilot with 13,000 flight hours landed a twin-engine Beech 58 Baron with the landing gear retracted at Downtown Airport in Shreveport, Louisiana, on 16 October 2024. The aircraft touched down on the runway wheels up and the fuselage was substantially damaged. The pilot and his passenger were not injured. In its final report, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) gives the probable cause as the pilot's inadvertent failure to lower the landing gear before touching down1.

A routine flight from New Orleans

The Baron departed New Orleans at 15:30 local time on a corporate flight under Part 91. The pilot flew VFR with flight following. Conditions at the destination were good: clear skies, visibility of 10 miles and wind from 070 degrees at 9 knots, gusting 15 knots. At around 17:00, after flying the traffic pattern, the aircraft landed on runway 5, an asphalt runway 4,198 feet long1.

The pilot reported that the flight was routine until the landing, when for some reason he neglected to lower the gear. He stated that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation, and added that minimising distractions and complacency might have prevented the accident1. NTSB investigators did not travel to the scene1.

A professional pilot with 2,100 hours on type

The 64-year-old pilot held an airline transport pilot certificate and was also a flight instructor, with single-engine, multi-engine and instrument instructor ratings. He flew for a living and had 13,000 hours in total, 2,100 of them on this make and model. He had flown 37 hours in the previous 90 days and 14 hours in the previous 30 days1. The Baron, registered N4203A, was built in 1970. It had six seats, two 285-horsepower Continental IO-520 piston engines and retractable tricycle landing gear1.

"I have run this last segment of the flight through my mind a hundred times"

In his statement to the NTSB, the pilot describes his usual routine. At about 5 miles out he slows the aircraft to 150 knots and lowers the approach flaps. After turning final he aims to be below 120 knots with the gear down, followed by the final flaps. He writes that this is what he did, except that, "for reasons still unknown to me", he missed lowering the gear2. He describes the damage as typical of a gear-up landing: a propeller strike and damage to the belly skin, the inboard gear doors and the flaps2.

As a safety recommendation, the pilot writes that every flight deserves the same attention and that distractions, complacency and overconfidence must not be allowed to creep in. "Although one has made thousands of flights it only takes but a second to miss one of the most critical parts of every flight," he writes. His closing line: "Never think it can't happen to you"2.

Gear-up landings are more common than accident statistics suggest

The NTSB accident figures capture only a fraction of gear-up landings. Starting in 2014, the AOPA Air Safety Institute logged the gear-ups that appeared in the FAA's weekly preliminary reports. In calendar year 2016 it counted 159. Only five were deliberate or the result of equipment failure. In the other 154, an average of three per week, the pilots presumably neglected to select "gear down". Fewer than 10 per cent of the 159 made it into the NTSB accident database, one reason being that gear-up landings almost never cause serious injuries. AOPA also noted that the NTSB definition of "substantial damage" seems to exclude the majority of gear-up landings3.

Writing in June 2020, AOPA's Richard McSpadden said that conversations with insurers, and some limited data they shared, showed gear-up landings to be the second-most-claimed type of incident. Together with gear collapses, he described them as the most costly problem in general aviation overall, even though, at $70,000 per incident, each costs less than the more catastrophic accidents. According to McSpadden, the overwhelming majority of gear-up landings are inadvertent: through distraction or some other complicating issue, the pilot forgets to extend the gear4.

Not just a beginner's mistake

The FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook lists neglecting to extend the landing gear among the frequent errors made by pilots transitioning to retractable-gear aeroplanes. The handbook stresses that these mistakes are made not only by pilots who have just moved to complex aircraft, but also by pilots who have developed a sense of complacency over time5. It recommends lowering the gear at the same point on the downwind leg every time and completing the before-landing checklist there, so that the gear-down indicators can be rechecked before landing. Pilots should also know the gear warning horn and warning lights of their own aircraft. On most aeroplanes with retractable gear, the horn sounds when the aircraft is configured for landing and the gear is not down and locked5. For multi-engine aeroplanes, the handbook warns that an interruption to a pilot's habit patterns, such as a go-around, is a classic scenario for a subsequent gear-up landing6.

Moving to retractable gear in the US and in Europe

In the United States, federal regulations define an aeroplane with retractable landing gear, flaps and a controllable-pitch propeller as a "complex airplane"7. To act as pilot in command of one, a pilot generally needs logged ground and flight training from an authorised instructor and a one-time logbook endorsement certifying that he or she is proficient to operate a complex airplane, with limited exceptions8. In Europe, a single-engine piston aeroplane with retractable gear sits within the same class rating as one with fixed gear, but moving to it requires differences training unless credits have been established through the operational suitability data (OSD). All aircraft within the multi-engine piston class rating likewise require differences training, with the same exception9.