CHI00FA006 · Dassault DA-900B
Dassault DA-900B · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Portland International Airport (PDX) to Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00FA006
- 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
- General aviation
- 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-900B
- Aircraft type
- Dassault DA-900
- 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
- N523AC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Airport (PDX), Portland, ORTo Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), Grand Rapids, MI
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Copilot/second pilot › Autopilot, improper use of
- Copilot/second pilot › Level off, improper
- Copilot/second pilot › Porpoise/pilot-induced oscillation, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight experienced a series of pitch oscillations while on descent to an assigned altitude of 11,000 feet mean sea level(msl). The flight attendant was seriously injured. The Captain reported that when he was at about 11,400 feet msl, it appeared the airplane was going to descend below the assigned altitude. The First Officer, who was the flying pilot in the left seat, reported that he pulled back on the airplane's yoke to initiate the level off without disengaging the autopilot. He reported that when he relaxed the back pressure on the yoke, the airplane pitched nose down violently and a series of three to four pitch oscillations occurred before the airplane was brought under control. The aircraft load factors reached magnitudes between +3.3g and -1.2 g. The flight attendant was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the incident. The inspection of the airplane revealed no pre-existing anomalies. Neither the autopilot's pilot manual nor the airplane's flight manual contained a Warning, Caution, or Note that explicitly stated not to manually override the autopilot. On October 18, 1999, Falcon Aviation issued Newsflash 52 that notified operators not to manually apply control yoke forces in an attempt to control the aircraft when the autopilot is engaged.
Probable cause
The copilot's improper use of the autopilot system while leveling the flight from descent, resulting in an inadvertent pilot-induced pitch oscillation of the airplane. A factor was the flight attendant not wearing a seat belt at the time of the occurrence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00FA006
- Event ID
- 20001212X19912
- Case number
- CHI00FA006
- 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: 7bd44032b970067880857b843d8f1132194351e4f4a1134eeaf2de3b0de38e7c; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:49:06.455Z.