NYC06MA192 · Embraer 110P1
Business Air Embraer 110P1 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Greater Binghamton/Edwin A Link field (BGM) to William H Morse State Airport (DDH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06MA192
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Embraer 110P1
- Aircraft type
- Embraer 110
- 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
- N59BA
- Operator
- Business Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greater Binghamton/Edwin A Link field (BGM), Binghamton, NYTo William H Morse State Airport (DDH), Bennington, VT
- 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
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Navaid signal, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airport's instrument approach procedures included a very high frequency, omni-directional range (VOR) approach, and a global positioning system (GPS) approach that was not an overlay. The VOR approach procedure included an inbound course to the VOR, and after passage, a descent along the same course to a missed approach point. The missed approach point was defined as 6 nautical miles beyond the VOR, as well as by timing. The pilot twice attempted the VOR approach in instrument meteorological conditions. He flew the first approach to the missed approach point, initiated a missed approach, contacted the controller, and requested a second VOR approach. He then received vectors to rejoin the approach course inbound to the VOR. The airplane subsequently passed over the VOR, on course, about 100 feet above the minimum altitude. However, instead of descending as described in the procedure, the airplane maintained that altitude until reaching the airport, then began a descent. The airplane continued to travel outbound along the same approach course until it impacted rising terrain about 6.5 miles beyond the airport. There was no dedicated distance measuring equipment (DME) onboard the airplane. Instead, distance was determined by the use of an instrument flight rules (IFR)-approved GPS unit. Due to the non-storage capability of the unit, historical waypoint selection could not be determined. The pilot could have selected the airport as a "direct to" waypoint, or, if he had entered flight plan waypoints, the unit would have sequenced from the VOR to the airport during the first approach. In either case, unless the pilot reprogrammed the unit, the last waypoint entered would have remained at the airport, rather than the VOR. The pilot then most likely mistook the airport position for the VOR position, and displaced the beginning of the descent by 6 nautical miles. Also noted, was that once the airplane passed over the VOR en route to the airport, the HSI would have indicated a change of "to" to "from". There were no medical anomalies noted with the pilot and no mechanical anomalies noted with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's misinterpretation of the airplane's position relative to the final approach fix, which resulted in the displacement of the descent profile by 6 nautical miles and the subsequent controlled flight into rising terrain. Contributing to the accident were the low clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06MA192
- Event ID
- 20060822X01221
- Case number
- NYC06MA192
- 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: ffc2939aa4fd6fe667b98a3c6b9eee5e80962743ff8ea500a360f115c9544e10; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:06:01.381Z.