Corporate Air Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: nose down while taxiing
From Yellowstone Regional Airport (COD) to Central Wyoming Regional Airport (RIW)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA036
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N980FE
- Operator
- Corporate Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yellowstone Regional Airport (COD)To Central Wyoming Regional Airport (RIW), Riverton, WY
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Taxi · to runway
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Nose down
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Unfavorable wind
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that while he was taxiing out for takeoff on runway 22, he was monitoring the airport's Automatic Weather Observation Station (AWOS), and winds were reported to be gusting 34 to 36 knots. While turning from northwest to northeast on the taxiways, the airplane's left wing lifted up and the airplane nosed down. The AWOS wind report approximately 3 minutes after the accident was 250 degrees at 27 knots, gusting to 43 knots. The manufacturer's Information Manual for this airplane states that the maximum demonstrated crosswind velocity is 20 knots (not a limitation).
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain aircraft control due to unfavorable winds conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA036
- Event ID
- 20001205X00148
- Case number
- DEN99LA036
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-02-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1f6afb1d7ec3217fd242d6a3b3137c64608dd8c54a187e7c71d30a1cba8ef313; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:59:54.752Z.