IAD05FA047 · Pilatus PC-12/45
Pilatus PC-12/45 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Naples Municipal Airport (APF) to State College Regional Airport (UNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05FA047
- 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
- 6 · 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
Pilatus PC-12/45
- Aircraft type
- Pilatus PC-12
- 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
- N770G
- Operator
- Jeffrey M. Jacober · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Naples Municipal Airport (APF), Naples, FLTo State College Regional Airport (UNV), State College, PA
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident airplane was on an instrument landing system (ILS) approach to land, when witnesses reported seeing it spinning in a nose down, near vertical attitude before it collided with the ground. The accident site was about 3 miles from the approach end of the intended runway. A review of radar data disclosed that the private pilot had difficulty maintaining altitude and airspeed while on final approach, with significant excursions above and below the glidepath, as well as large variations in airspeed. Interviews with other pilots in the area just prior to and after the accident revealed that icing conditions existed in clouds near the airport, although first responders to the accident site indicated that there was no ice on the airplane. Postaccident inspection of the airplane, its engine and flight navigation systems, discovered no evidence of preimpact anomalies. An analysis of the airplane's navigation system's light bulbs, suggests that the pilot had selected the GPS mode for the initial approach, but had not switched to the proper instrument approach mode to allow the autopilot to lock onto the ILS.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed to avoid a stall during an instrument final approach to land, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. Factors associated with the accident are the inadvertent stall/spin, the pilot's failure to follow procedures/directives, and clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05FA047
- Event ID
- 20050331X00387
- Case number
- IAD05FA047
- 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: fd2a83f4a49530612ba95d37917faa5189ca9c85c960163ce89d1ea07b6ba9a6; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:05:57.908Z.