Martinaire Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) to McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA050
- 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
- Visual 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
- N9469B
- Operator
- Martinaire
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), Covington, KYTo McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS), Knoxville, TN
- 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
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Airframe › Ice
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the cargo flight reported that she arrived at the airplane at 0515 and performed a preflight inspection. The airplane was ready to depart about 0600 and she performed a final walk-around inspection prior to takeoff. The airplane had climbed to 300 to 400 feet above the runway, and was at an airspeed of about 120 knots, when it became "abnormally heavy on the flight controls," and "very unstable about its lateral axis (pitch control)." The pilot elected to reduce the throttle to idle and perform the rejected takeoff procedure. The airplane touched down in snow covered grass, about 85 feet approximately 85 feet off the left side of the runway. The airplane's landing gear collapsed, and the fuselage was buckled near the aft end of the cargo pod. Photographs taken by airport personnel shortly after the accident revealed areas of frost present on the wings and empennage. In addition, ice was observed on portions of the leading edges of the left and right wings. Examination of the airplane did not revealed any mechanical malfunctions. The Cessna 208B information manual, section 4, Normal Procedures, Cold Weather Operations, stated in part: "...Even small accumulations of frost, ice, or snow must be removed, particularly from wing, tail and all control surfaces to assure satisfactory flight performance and handling...." A weather observation taken at the departure airport about the time of the accident included a temperature and dew point of 16 degrees F.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate pre-flight inspection, which resulted in a decrease in airplane performance due to ice, and a subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA050
- Event ID
- 20031230X02094
- Case number
- NYC04LA050
- 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: investigation status, coordinates. 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: 54d852fa51d904060001eb3b4bb0318e398f7a0c1298b761debbf8d3e8d5b3a0; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:32:34.431Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N9469B; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, GPMA.