Baron Aviation Services Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: hard landing
From Eppley Airfield (OMA) to Central Nebraska Regional Airport (GRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA084
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N738FX
- Operator
- Baron Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eppley Airfield (OMA), Omaha, NETo Central Nebraska Regional Airport (GRI)
- 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
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Empennage › Ice
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
- Wing › Ice
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Grand Island, NE, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was in cruise flight at 4,000 feet mean sea level (msl), when moderate ice began forming on the airplane. The pilot requested and received approval from air traffic control to climb to a higher altitude. The airplane reached an altitude of 6,700 feet msl, and would not climb any higher. The pilot maintained 6,500 feet msl until he turned onto the VOR/DME approach for runway 31 at Grand Island. The pilot maintained an airspeed between 125 and 140 knots on the approach. When the airplane was over the runway, the pilot reduced the throttle from cruise power. The airplane began to drop. The pilot said that he added power, but it did not stop the sink rate. The airplane touched down hard on the runway, slowly veered to the left, departed the runway, and turned around 180 degrees in a field before coming to a stop. Approximately 1-1/2 inches of clear ice was observed adhering to the leading edges of the wings and empennage after the accident.
Probable cause
ice build-up on the airplane's wings and empennage which led to an inadvertent stall and hard landing. Factors contributing to this accident were the pilot's inadvertent flight into icing conditions, and the icing conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA084
- Event ID
- 20001211X09409
- Case number
- CHI98LA084
- 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: 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: 9af699c27983038e643ab6ed00e88881bb86a142dd95ee8c8dd0d9b7508bfded; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:14:37.560Z.