St.Louis Flight Systems Gates Learjet LR-24D accident
Gates Learjet LR-24D · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET) to Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC84LA274
- 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
Gates Learjet LR-24D
- Aircraft type
- Learjet LR-24
- 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
- N45AJ
- Operator
- St.Louis Flight Systems
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, MITo Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, MO
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground/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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS LANDED IN A THUNDERSTORM WITH A 16 KT LEFT QUARTERING TAILWIND. THE PLT WAS AWARE OF AN AREA ON THE RWY WHICH TENDED TO COLLECT WATER BUT DUE TO HEAVY PRECIPITATION THIS AREA COULD NOT BE VIEWED FROM THE COCKPIT. THE LEFT MAIN GEAR HYDROPLANED AS IT CONTACTED THIS AREA DURING THE LANDING ROLL RESULTING IN A 90 DEG RIGHT TURN. THE ACFT DEPARTED THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE RWY TRAVELING INTO ROUGH TERRAIN AT WHICH TIME THE LEFT MAIN GEAR PUNCTURED THE WING. HYDROPLANE MARKS WERE VISIBLE ON BOTH LEFT MAIN GEAR TIRES AFTER THE ACCIDENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC84LA274
- Event ID
- 20001214X41172
- Case number
- MKC84LA274
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1984-09-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 27a286665715d463608e88316f7656cfa105538074754c77a8d72da9e718298b; retrieved 2026-09-18T20:37:20.486Z.