FTW00LA075 · Cessna 414
Cessna 414 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From 2DT to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA075
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 414
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 414
- 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
- N7VS
- Operator
- Robert R. Alkema · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2DTTo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TX
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that light snow was falling, with approximately 2 inches already on the ground, and the runway had been plowed approximately one hour prior to his departure. About 20 minutes had elapsed since the airplane had been towed from the '68 degree F' hangar. During the takeoff, the airplane accelerated 'normally' and became airborne after traveling about 2,160 feet down the 3,240-foot runway. After liftoff, the airplane did not climb above 25 or 30 feet agl. The airplane impacted an embankment at the end of the runway, continued across railroad tracks, and through a fence coming to rest in a brick storage yard about 800-1,000 feet from the departure end of the runway. The pilot stated that someone told him that the airport did not have any deicing equipment, therefore, he did not deice the airplane. The weather facility, located 5 miles from the accident site, reported the wind from 100 degrees at 7 knots, visibility 1/2 mile with snow and freezing fog, temperature 27 degrees F.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to deice the airplane prior to departure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA075
- Event ID
- 20001212X20370
- Case number
- FTW00LA075
- 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: 941b818fc31e0f3ead87b43ae63c393ee6aa3a487d0fa0f0ba0de3115ae4584c; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:18:54.430Z.