UPS Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From Auburn Lewiston Municipal Airport (LEW) to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02LA021
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N207TA
- Operator
- UPS
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn Lewiston Municipal Airport (LEW), Lewiston, METo Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT), Manchester, NH
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected 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
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Snow fell as the pilot cleared the airplane using a ladder and broom. A pre-takeoff contamination check was also conducted from the cockpit before the airplane taxied onto the snow-covered runway. Once on the runway, the pilot back-taxied its full length and deployed a 10-degree flap setting for departure. The pilot began the takeoff roll and rotated the airplane when it reached 90 knots. The main wheels lifted off momentarily, then settled back on the runway. The takeoff was aborted, but the airplane overran the runway departure end of the runway and collided with the localizer antenna. A post-accident review of the company operations manual by the operator and the Federal Aviation Administration resulted in more stringent de-icing requirements for the flight crews and the addition of takeoff performance planning, as well as aborted takeoff criteria considerations for operations on contaminated runways. Included in the new de-icing procedures was the mandatory use of de-icing fluid prior to taxi in freezing precipitation with outside air temperatures between plus 2 and minus 4 degrees Celsius.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately ensure the wings were free of contamination prior to departure. Factors included the operator's inadequate de-icing procedures and the snowy weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02LA021
- Event ID
- 20020103X00015
- Case number
- IAD02LA021
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-12-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: db135d1386141d8d66f89e76b4327c287686622c21c1d54d292d9bc7b40a57e5; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:07:23.337Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N207TA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.