ANC06LA069 · Cessna 421B
Cessna 421B · Accident during initial climb
From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG) to PEN · Pensacola, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06LA069
- 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
Cessna 421B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N80MJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville Executive at Craig Airport (CRG), Jacksonville, FLTo PEN · Pensacola, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private certificated pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight under Title 14, CFR Part 91. He reported that during initial climb after takeoff, he felt intense heat from the instrument panel and floorboard. He also thought he smelled smoke. The pilot declared an emergency, and returned to the airport. He said several aural warning alarms sounded, and his communications radio was inoperative. He reported he thought the airplane was on fire, and landed in the dirt between the runway and taxiway, with the landing gear retracted. The airplane collided with the ground and a runway sign, damaging its wings. An FAA operations inspector and an FAA maintenance inspector examined the airplane. They found no evidence of heat or smoke, and the navigation instruments and communications radios appeared to operate normally. The airplane was not examined by the NTSB.
Probable cause
An undetermined event during takeoff/initial climb, which resulted in an emergency landing after takeoff and substantial damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06LA069
- Event ID
- 20060620X00770
- Case number
- ANC06LA069
- 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: cca45c426d2e9cf5fc1f918af2e073f9649d6b998eef6bc4f2650252c4fdab82; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:45:23.004Z.