Pilot Debrief

Beech 400 near Richmond, IN — 2019-02-11

Final reportCEN19LA090
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Date
2019-02-11
Location
Richmond, IN, USA
Airport
RID
Aircraft
Beech 400
Registration
N750TA
Category
Airplane
Highest injury
None
Fatalities
0

Probable cause

The flight crew's decision to continue an unstable approach under conditions that exceeded the airplane's landing performance capabilities, which resulted in a runway overrun and impact with terrain.

NTSB narrative

The flight crew was approaching the destination airport on an instrument flight rules cross-country flight in instrument meteorological conditions. The captain stated that, after visually acquiring the runway environment during the approach, he saw that the runway "had a very light coating of snow," but he chose to continue the approach and apply full thrust reversers and braking after touchdown. The cockpit voice recorder revealed that the first officer advised the captain that the airplane was high while on final approach. The airplane crossed the runway threshold at 150 knots, touched down about 3,100 ft along the 5,502-ft-long runway at 125 knots, continued down the remaining runway, through an antenna array, and across a road before coming to rest about 750 ft beyond the paved surface. The airplane's landing approach reference speed (Vref) was between 110 and 114 knots. On a dry runway with calm wind conditions, the airplane required between about 3,200 ft and 3,500 ft runway stopping distance after touchdown; on a runway contaminated with wet or compacted snow, this distance increased to 5,300 ft. Although the captain reported that the engines shut down without his input following the accident, images from the accident site showed that the nose landing gear collapsed, deforming the surrounding structure, which included the area of the throttle quadrant. It is likely that the collapsed structure impacted the throttle quadrant and resulted in the engine shutdown. The captain reported that there were no other mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane. The captain and first officer conducted a preflight inspection of the airplane and checked the weather several times on the morning of the flight. The captain reported that the weather conditions were improving, and he did not recall seeing any new NOTAMs regarding runway conditions. The pilots' decision to continue the unstable approach and landing to the snow-covered runway despite that the distance available was inadequate resulted in the runway overrun; however, given the airplane's excessive approach speed and touchdown point over halfway down the runway, it is likely that the crew would have been unable to stop the airplane on the remaining runway even if it had been uncontaminated.

NTSB coding

View NTSB final report

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