The NTSB reports of the 100 most recent B55 Baron crashes turned up some unexpected results: there were only three runway loss of control (RLOC) events, far fewer than we expect for tricycle-gear airplanes; for an airplane with a fuel system that has a reputation as simple, the majority of the 15 fuel-related accidents involved mismanaging the system and fuel selectors and over half of the pilot-induced gear-up events involved retracting the gear on rollout.
We have long been impressed with the landing gear design on the Baron—it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to maintain. Only two of the Baron accidents involved a system failure in which the pilot could not get the Firestones down and locked.