IAD02LA027 · Cessna 208B
Cessna 208B · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Waterville Robert Lafleur Airport (WVL) to MAN · Manchester, NH
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02LA027
- 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
- N8RQ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waterville Robert Lafleur Airport (WVL), Waterville, METo MAN · 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 · 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
- 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 › Planning/decision, improper
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 attempted a takeoff from the snow-covered runway. The reported wind was 130 degrees from the right at 16, gusting to 24 knots. The pilot selected the runway, in part, because of a 1.2 percent downslope. The pilot rotated the nose of the airplane at 80 knots, and the airplane "pulled" to the left. The pilot lowered the nose and reduced power, but the airplane continued to "slide" to the left, off the runway, and into 6 to 8 inches of snow. It then nosed over, and came to rest inverted.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to attempt a takeoff from a snow-covered runway with a quartering tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02LA027
- Event ID
- 20020206X00190
- Case number
- IAD02LA027
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-01-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0f020a748a4741095e956e87e8d01214fcf320789160c069e65e7f6399312202; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:06:20.140Z.