DEN88LA208 · Cessna 421B
Cessna 421B · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From Pista Santa Rita (SD39) to Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN88LA208
- 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
Cessna 421B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N44HV
- Operator
- Oltersdorf, Walter · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pista Santa Rita (SD39)To Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PRIVATE PLT AND 4 PAX WERE ATTEMPTING TAKEOFF ON RWY 13, A 3,900 X 30 FT ASPHALT RWY. THE PLT SAID THE ACFT ACCELERATED TO 100 KNOTS BUT HE COULD NOT RAISE THE NOSE FOR LIFT OFF. THE PLT SAID HE ABORTED THE TAKEOFF AND INTENTIONALLY GROUND LOOPED TO THE RT; HOWEVER, A WITNESS REPORTED THAT THE ACFT LEFT THE RWY AT HIGH SPEED AND THE ENGINES SOUNDED AS IF THEY WERE AT FULL POWER. A POST ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION BY AN FAA INVESTIGATOR REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF PRE-ACCIDENT FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION. THE INVESTIGATOR SAID THAT THE GROUND IMPRESSIONS SHOWED NO INDICATION OF BRAKING AND INDICATED THE NOSE GEAR COLLAPSED 400 FEET BEYOND THE RWY. A SHORT DISTANCE FARTHER, THE MAIN GEAR COLLAPSED. THE ACFT CAME TO REST IN A DITCH, 900 FEET AFTER LEAVING THE RWY AND SLIGHTLY RIGHT OF THE EXTENDED RWY CENTER LINE. IN A POST ACC INTERVIEW CONCERNING THE CONTROLS POSSIBLY BEING LOCKED THE PLT STATED THAT THE CONTROL LOCK HAD BEEN MISSING FOR 'SEVERAL WEEKS.'
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN88LA208
- Event ID
- 20001213X26815
- Case number
- DEN88LA208
- 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: a7c9a0bb5d76f9cedb41977ed1819c56331c52cfdb12e6e13312a587c436c6d8; retrieved 2026-09-23T08:49:38.275Z.