Air Max Airlines Cessna 310Q accident
Cessna 310Q · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD) to Pierre Regional Airport (PIR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06CA042
- 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 310Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N8403F
- Operator
- Air Max Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sioux Falls Regional Airport (FSD), Sioux Falls, SDTo Pierre Regional Airport (PIR), Pierre, SD
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, 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 airplane was substantially damaged when it impacted a snow bank during landing rollout. The pilot stated that he landed on the centerline, however, as he "lowered the nose the aircraft turned abruptly to the left" and the airplane became "uncontrollable." He noted that one wheel went off the runway and the airplane subsequently impacted a snow bank at the intersection of the runway and taxiway. The airplane traveled an additional 25 feet further down the runway after the initial impact before coming to rest. The nose landing gear was separated from the airframe and was located at the point of initial impact. The center portion of the runway was dry, however, the outer edges were covered with compacted snow and ice. The taxiway intersection was also covered with compacted snow and ice. The dry portion of the runway did not exhibit any skid marks attributable to the accident airplane. A post accident inspection did not reveal any anomalies with the aircraft.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during the landing roll due to the icy runway. Factors were the compacted snow and ice along the edges of the runway and at the taxiway intersection, and the snow banks adjacent to the runway and taxiway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06CA042
- Event ID
- 20051230X02034
- Case number
- CHI06CA042
- 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: 148799384bb1c17bf010e709eb20f9217e8ab801a72d9f9519af3c97d202f17c; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:57:10.214Z.