Trans-Air Cessna 402B accident
Cessna 402B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From Waimea Kohala Airport (MUE) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA103
- 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
- 1 · 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 402B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N999CR
- Operator
- Trans Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waimea Kohala Airport (MUE), HITo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HI
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Copilot/second pilot › Proper climb rate, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft departed at night from runway 4R on a flight to transport mail. The pilot-in-command (PIC) was in the left seat, a pilot-rated cargo loader was in the right seat, and another cargo loader was aboard the aircraft, but was not in a seat. During takeoff, the aircraft entered a turn and flew into gradually rising terrain. The initial impact point was about 15 feet higher than the runway elevation and about 0.3 miles abeam the departure end of the runway. Investigation revealed that the company allowed pilot-rated cargo loaders to fly the aircraft from the right seat during positioning and ferry flight segments (to build multiengine flight time) as part of their compensation. There was evidence that at the time of the accident, the aircraft was being piloted on this flight from the copilot's position. The right side of the instrument panel was equipped with only EGT gauges (no flight instruments on the copilot's side). There were cloud layers in the vicinity, no moon illumination, and no visible ground lighting in the direction of flight. No preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure was identified during the investigation. Except at the pilot and copilot positions, the airplane had no other seat and/or restraint system. The operator stated that the pilot was not authorized to carry company personnel or passengers without the required seating.
Probable cause
failure of the copilot (pilot-rated cargo loader, who was flying the aircraft) to establish and maintain a positive rate of climb after taking off at night; and inadequate supervision by the pilot-in-command (PIC), by failing to ensure that proper altitude was obtained and maintained during the departure. Factors relating to the accident were: darkness; the lack of visual cues; and the resultant visual illusion, which the copilot failed to recognize during the night departure. Also, the lack of a restraint system (seat belt and/or shoulder harness) for the passenger was a possible related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA103
- Event ID
- 20001208X05157
- Case number
- LAX96FA103
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cc21ca8a575d918bf8fea5119d29892c35e31d2f5585e8bc8ff336ae0078b8a8; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:39:24.549Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N999CR; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.