Pilot Held Responsible for Citation Overrun

On May 15 last year a Citation CJ2 (Danish registration OY-JET) landed 1,000 feet down the 2,948-foot-long runway at Bader Field in Atlantic City, N.J., and crashed into the water. There were no serious injuries to the four occupants. The NTSB recently released its final report and concluded the accident was caused by the pilot’s “improper decision” to land on a runway of insufficient length, to land on that inadequate runway with a tailwind and “his failure to obtain the proper touchdown point.” The Safety Board determined that the twinjet would have needed at least 3,750 feet of runway to land under the existing wind conditions and aircraft weight. Further, the published airport diagram for the airport–found attached to the pilot’s control column after the accident–contained the notation “airport closed to jet aircraft.” The same notation is in the FAA Airport/Facility Directory.