DEN04FA041 · Dassault Aviation DA-20 Falcon Jet
Dassault Aviation DA-20 Falcon Jet · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From CPS · St. Louis, MO to Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04FA041
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Dassault Aviation DA-20 Falcon Jet
- Aircraft type
- Dassault DA-20
- 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
- N200JE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CPS · St. Louis, MOTo Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, CO
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Directional control, not possible
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Thrust reverser › Failure, partial
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain reported that he obtained weather briefings prior to and during the flight. The briefings did not include any NOTAMS indicating a contaminated runway at their destination airport. The captain obtained a report from the local fixed base operator that a Learjet had landed earlier and reported the runway as being okay. The tower was closed on their arrival, so they made a low pass over the airport to inspect the runways. Based on the runway and wind conditions, they decided their best choice for landing was on runway 08L. The captain said the landing was normal and the airplane initially decelerated with normal braking. As they encountered snow and ice patches, the captain said he elected to deploy the thrust reversers. The captain said that as the thrust reversers deployed, the airplane began to yaw to the left and differential braking failed to realign the airplane with the runway. The captain said the airplane departed the left side of the runway and rotated counter clockwise before coming to rest on a southwesterly heading. A witness on the airport said, "I watched them touch down. I heard the [thrust] reversers go on and then off, and then on again. As they came back on for the second time, that's when the plane started making full circles on the runway. This happened two, maybe three times before going off the side of the runway." The airplane's right main landing gear collapsed on departing the runway, causing substantial damage to the right wing, right main landing gear and aft pressure bulkhead. At the accident site, the right engine thrust reverser was partially deployed. The left engine thrust reverser was fully deployed with the blocker doors extended. An examination of the airplane revealed a stuck solenoid on the right engine thrust reverser. No other system anomalies were found. Approximately 33 minutes prior to the accident, the pilot requested from Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center, the weather for the airport. Denver Center reported the conditions as "winds calm, visibility 6 miles with light mist, 3,000 overcast, temperature zero degrees Centigrade (C) dew point -1 degree C, altimeter three zero 30.20, and there was at least a half inch of slush on all surfaces." The pilot acknowledged the information. The NOTAM log for the airport showed that at 2115, the airport issued a NOTAM stating there was "1/2 inch wet snow all surfaces." The airport operations manager reported that at the time of the accident the runway surface was covered with 3/4 inch of wet snow. The airport conducts a 24 hour, 7 days a week operation; however, operations support digresses to fire coverage only after 2300.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision to land on the contaminated runway, the stuck thrust reverser solenoid resulting in partial deployment of the right engine thrust reverser, and the pilot's inability to maintain directional control of the airplane due to the asymmetric thrust combined with a contaminated runway. Factors contributing to the accident were the wet, snow-covered runway, the airport's failure to remove the snow from the runway, and the pilot's failure to recognize the reported hazardous runway conditions by air traffic control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04FA041
- Event ID
- 20040127X00113
- Case number
- DEN04FA041
- 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: 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: 655ce2e01256ff4da5706d526d0e1d260a54058b1a654333bbb7e7e265d15f1e; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:00:42.186Z.