Preliminary Reports
HondaJet Destroyed in Runway Excursion
Honda HA-420, May 18, 2023, Summerville, South Carolina
The pilot and all five passengers evacuated the HondaJet without injury before much of the airplane was consumed by fire after it departed the wet runway and “slid down a series of embankments before coming to a stop” during a landing attempt. The accident occurred shortly after midnight at the end of a 50-minute IFR flight from Wilkes County Airport in North Carolina.
The pilot told investigators that he had delayed their departure to allow storms to pass through the area and that in “hundreds” of landings at Summerville in both wet and dry conditions, he’d never had difficulty stopping on the 5,000-foot runway.
After executing the GPS approach to Runway 24 at a Vref of 120 knots, the pilot touched down with full flaps and immediately applied full brake pressure. The brakes began pulsating in anti-skid mode, cycling more slowly than he remembered from previous wet-runway landings.
He considered going around after realizing that they would not make the turnoff at the second taxiway only to have the left brake “grab” and yaw the airplane left. Rudder inputs caused a series of left and right skids. The pilot succeeded in straightening the nose just before the aircraft departed the runway, striking a departure-end runway light then sliding down a 10-foot embankment onto a rocky berm and then sliding down a second six-foot embankment. Impact damage to the right wing ignited a fire that eventually consumed that wing, the cockpit, and the center of the fuselage.
Four Lost Due to Apparent Pilot Incapacitation
Cessna Citation 560, June 4, 2023, Staunton, Virginia
The single pilot and three passengers perished when the Citation V made a near--vertical descent into a Virginia mountainside nearly two hours after the pilot stopped responding to communications from air traffic control. The flight departed Elizabethton, Tennessee, at 13:13 on an IFR flight plan for Long Island-MacArthur Airport. At 13:25, the flight was cleared to climb from FL290 to FL340. The readback of this clearance was the last transmission received from the airplane.
At 13:28, the controller instructed the pilot to level off at FL330 for crossing traffic but received no response. The Citation leveled off at FL340 and continued toward ISP on the route of its filed flight plan. It passed over the airport at 14:32 and turned back to the southwest in the general direction of its point of departure, maintaining FL340 and cutting through the Washington, D.C. Flight Restricted Zone. National Guard fighter jets intercepted the Citation about 15:20 and found the pilot “unresponsive to several radio transmissions, intercept flight maneuvers, and flare deployments.” Two minutes later, it descended into the ground in a tight right spiral.
The pilot, a retired airline captain, claimed more than 34,500 hours of flight experience that included 850 in CE-500 series airplanes. He was issued a first-class medical certificate on Oct. 10, 2022 and held seven type ratings.
No Injuries in Falcon Overrun
Dassault Falcon 10, June 6, 2023, Panama City, Florida
There were no injuries to the pilot, copilot, or any of the three passengers when the Falcon 10 ran off the end of 10,000-foot Runway 16 at Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport, striking two support poles for the approach lighting to Runway 34.
The pilot reported that all aircraft systems functioned normally throughout the flight from Atlanta’s Cobb County International Airport. Skies were clear and visibility was reported as 10 miles during a straight-in ILS approach, and the jet touched down about 2,500 feet beyond the runway’s approach end.
The pilot deployed the speed brakes and set both engines to reverse idle, but the reversers did not deploy and the “system disagree” horn sounded. Normal braking produced no apparent deceleration; the copilot tried his brakes without effect. Full emergency braking likewise failed to slow the aircraft, as did recycling the brakes and thrust reversers.
Not knowing whether the reversers were deployed, the pilot chose not to abort the landing. The reversers’ piggyback handles prevented him from shutting down the engines with the throttles, so he steered the airplane between two support poles, which the inboard portion of both wings and then the engine inlets struck. The airplane bounced over a mound into soft sand, coming to rest after the landing gear collapsed.
Two Killed in Amphibian Crash
Quest Kodiak 100, June 21, 2023, Tofino, British Columbia, Canada
A privately owned Quest Kodiak equipped with amphibious floats crashed near the shore of Vancouver Island, killing two of the four on board. The flight departed Masset Airport on Graham Island for Tofino at 11:30; at about 14:00, the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria was notified of an emergency locator transmitter signal. Two Canadian Coast Guard vessels, two RCAF CH-149 Cormorant helicopters, and a CC-130 Hercules airplane responded and located the wreckage in a remote area 16 nm northwest of the destination airport. Two seriously injured survivors were hoisted out by the RCAF helicopter crewmen and transported to B.C. Emergency Health Services. The extent and nature of their injuries was not initially reported, nor were the prevailing weather conditions.
Final Reports
Premature Descent Claims Conquest
Cessna 441, Feb. 7, 2021, Belvidere, Tennessee
The 78-year-old airline transport pilot’s descent below the charted minimum altitude for the final approach fix during a GPS approach in actual instrument conditions ended in a collision with trees about five miles from the runway threshold and 900 feet above the airport elevation. The NTSB concluded that the pilot had deliberately tried to get below a low overcast layer to make visual contact with the airport. He and his passenger, a 58-year-old commercial pilot and instrument instructor, died in the crash, which occurred at the end of an IFR flight from Georgia's Thomasville Regional Airport to Winchester Municipal Airport in Tennessee. Ceilings of 800 to 1,000 feet with light rime icing were reported.
Flying the GPS approach to Runway 36, the turboprop crossed the intermediate fix at the charted altitude of 4,000 feet but descended below 3,000—the minimum altitude at the final approach fix—while still four miles outside it. Radar contact was lost at 2,300 feet due to sparse coverage in that area. The last ADS-B return came about 0.6 nm south of the final approach fix and indicated an altitude of 2,100 feet. The controller attempted to contact the pilot without success. The crash occurred just north of the final approach fix at an elevation of 1,880 feet, sparking a fire that consumed “most of the cockpit, fuselage, inboard left wing, and outboard left horizontal stabilizer.”
Turbo Commander Destroyed in Spin
Rockwell International 690B, Sept. 28, 2021, Hiles, Wisconsin
Three employees of an aerial imaging business died after the Turbo Commander entered an inadvertent spin at an altitude of 16,100 feet. ADS-B data showed that within two minutes after leveling off at a groundspeed of 209 knots, it decelerated to 93 knots, descended 500 feet on a steady northeasterly heading, then entered a rapidly descending right turn. Radio transmissions of “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” and “We’re in a spin” were received by air traffic control.
The NTSB’s performance study indicated that it reached a pitch attitude of 30 degrees nose-down and a descent rate in excess of 20,000 fpm. The NTSB noted that the pilot operating handbooks for models 690A and 690B did not include spin recovery procedures.
Bird Strike Confirmed in Helicopter Break-up
Bell 206L-1 LongRanger, July 9, 2022, Cattai, New South Wales, Australia
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) confirmed that a collision with a wedge-tail eagle, Australia’s largest bird of prey, precipitated the in-flight break-up of the 1979 Bell 206L-1 LongRanger. However, the ATSB also concluded that the impact itself, which occurred on the front left nose cowl, would not have caused significant damage to the aircraft. Rather, the pilot’s abrupt control inputs in a last-second attempt to avoid the collision caused the main rotor to sever the tailboom, according to the ATSB. The position of the sun relative to the helicopter's flight path and radio communication duties likely prevented the pilot from seeing the eagle until just before impact.
Witnesses saw the helicopter cross Dargle Ridge at about 500 feet before pitching up and banking right. Investigators found remains of the bird in the wreckage and downhill from the accident site. The tail boom and driveshaft were 93 meters (305 feet) north of the fuselage, while the main rotor system, including the gearbox, teetering head, and blades, was found 68 meters to the west. While the pilot was also qualified in airplanes, nearly 90 percent of his experience (4,800 of 5,400 hours) was in helicopters.
Pilot Distraction Led to CFIT
Eurocopter EC135P2+, March 9, 2023, Franklin, North Carolina
The 51-year-old commercial pilot’s “improper decision” to check scheduled maintenance times against the helicopter’s logbook while operating on autopilot at night delayed his seeing a forested peak in time to avoid contact. The logbook was on the co-pilot’s seat under his night vision goggles; before returning it to its compartment in the pilot-side door, he set the autopilot to descend to 5,000 feet to avoid lower ceilings ahead, then “went back heads down.”
When the flight nurse requested an updated arrival time, he looked up, saw the trees, and applied aft cyclic to climb, but the tail boom “struck several trees,” separating the vertical stabilizer.
Three of the four occupants suffered minor injuries during the ensuing forced landing on a road, which caused “substantial damage to the fuselage and tail boom.” Visibility was reported to be 10 miles under a 5,000-foot overcast.