Reliant Airlines Dassault DA-20 accident
Dassault DA-20 · Accident: undershoot on approach
From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC) to Blue Grass Airport (LEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA165
- 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
Dassault DA-20
- Aircraft type
- Dassault DA-20
- 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
- N227R
- Operator
- Reliant Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC), Oklahoma City, OKTo Blue Grass Airport (LEX)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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
- Pilot in command › Altitude, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Distance, misjudged
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lexington, KY, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 4 to 5 miles from the destination airport, and while conducting an ILS approach at night to runway 04, the pilot made visual contact with the airport, the runway lights, and the visual approach slope indicator. The approach was continued visually. Over the approach lights the airplane encountered heavy rain. The copilot observed the airplane was low on both the VASI and the airplane's HSI. The pilot applied power and initiated a go-around. The airplane landed hard on a grass bank, about 13 feet short of runway 4. Weather 9 minutes before the accident included winds from 310 degrees at 6 knots, with a visibility of 8 miles, light rain and mist. Weather 4 minutes after accident included winds from 310 degrees at 8 knots, with a visibility of 2 1/2 miles and heavy rain. The approach end of the runway was about 34 feet lower than the highest point of the runway, about 4,500 feet from the approach end. The Aeronautical Information Manual stated either upsloping runways, or rain on the windscreens, could create illusions that an aircraft was higher than actual altitude.
Probable cause
The pilot misjudged distance and altitude to the runway after transition from an instrument approach to a visual approach. Factors related to the accident were the rain, and uphill runway conditions at a dark night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA165
- Event ID
- 20001208X08728
- Case number
- NYC97LA165
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-08-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b204a93644c34b54841fda16f17a6f829ea53bbf989c92f97535541890eeaac8; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:26:46.330Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N227R; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.