Corporate Air Short Brothers SD3-60 accident
Short Brothers SD3-60 · Accident: hard landing
From Great Falls International Airport (GTF) to Billings Logan International Airport (BIL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA016
- 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
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Short Brothers SD3-60
- Aircraft type
- Short Brothers SD3
- 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
- N691A
- Operator
- Corporate Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Great Falls International Airport (GTF), Great Falls, MTTo Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), MT
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Proper descent rate, not obtained/maintained
- Landing gear, main gear › Overload
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Short Brothers SD3-60 cargo flight was being vectored for the VOR/DME RWY 28R approach to the Billings Logan International airport during instrument meteorological conditions. Weather conditions one minute before the accident were winds 020 at 13 knots, light snow and mist, and visibility was deteriorating rapidly. The co-pilot (occupying the right seat) was flying the aircraft, and the PIC (occupying the left seat) was handling radio communications. At 0812:25, having crossed the final approach fix, the aircraft descended through 100 feet above the MDA (3,940 feet or 426 feet above the runway threshold), and immediately thereafter the crew visually acquired the runway. At 0813:01 the aircraft's GPWS alert of 'SINK RATE' was heard, followed 2 seconds later by the PIC calling for 'POWER,' and a 2 second delay to ground impact. The co-pilot had logged a total of 103 hours in the SD3-60 (all within the previous 90 days,) while the PIC had just begun flying the aircraft in Montana's late fall weather after a 6 year assignment flying in the Hawaiian islands. The left main landing gear collapsed in overload during the ground impact.
Probable cause
The co-pilot's failure to maintain the proper descent rate on final approach, the pilot-in-command's delayed remedial action, and overload of the left main landing gear assembly. Factors contributing were snow, crosswind conditions and deteriorating visibility.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA016
- Event ID
- 20001208X09248
- Case number
- SEA98LA016
- 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: 94c49fb129f8d87c0b91301099f519b67427d1c29a3e3b24f62965b9c5e8f960; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:17:43.624Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N691A; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, HSYA.