LAX02FA075 · Cessna 525A
Cessna 525A · Accident: overrun during landing
From Sacramento International Airport (SMF) to Marin County Airport - Gnoss Field (DVO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02FA075
- 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
- 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 525A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 525
- 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
- N288G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Sacramento, CATo Marin County Airport - Gnoss Field (DVO), Novato, CA
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Proper touchdown point, not attained
- Pilot in command › Raising of flaps, not performed
- Pilot in command › Spoiler retraction, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane overran the runway and impacted a ravine off the departure end of the runway after landing. Prior to the cross-country flight, the pilot obtained a weather brief from the Flight Service Station, and he was unsure he would be able to land at the destination airport due to weather. He monitored Air Traffic Control transmissions and heard that an airplane had broken out of the weather at 1,200 feet and landed at the destination airport. The pilot was cleared for the GPS approach. He noted that he was higher and faster than normal. He activated the speed brakes to help slow down the descent. The airplane touched down about 1/3 of the way down the runway. He activated the ground flaps and spoilers, and the brakes. When the airplane did not decelerate the pilot elected to abort the landing. He added power, but forgot to retract the flaps and spoilers. The airplane continued off the departure end of the runway and came to rest in a ravine. Reported winds prior to landing were 230 degrees at 11 knots gusting to 17 knots. Right after the accidents winds were reported from 290 degrees at 20 knots gusting to 27 knots. The runway was 3,300 feet. According to the manufacturer, with a tailwind condition, the airplane needed approximately 3,400 feet to make a normal landing. The pilot stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions noted with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to achieve the proper touchdown point and his failure to retract the flaps and spoilers during an attempted landing abort, which resulted in a landing overrun. Also causal was the pilot's decision to attempt a landing in wind conditions that exceeded the landing performance capability of the airplane for the runway selected.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02FA075
- Event ID
- 20020214X00222
- Case number
- LAX02FA075
- 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 2002-02-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8520cddfdc461e4aabd0fbe2df066e98762e89064753f8d8df1d6e7788a58363; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:08:16.856Z.