OPS08IA009 · Learjet 45
Learjet 45 · Incident during landing
From Westchester County Airport (HPN) to Teterboro Airport (KTEB)
Event
- NTSB case
- OPS08IA009
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Learjet 45
- Aircraft type
- Learjet 45
- 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
- N988PA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NYTo Teterboro Airport (KTEB), Teterboro, NJ
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe 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
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The local air traffic controller was working alone and was aware that runways 1 and 19 were closed due to maintenance related work. He appropriately placed internal tower controls to indicate that the runways were closed, but failed to place that information on the recorded ATIS (automatic terminal information service) for arriving and departing air traffic. He also failed to advise the local approach controller when the approach controller called him to advise that he had an airplane inbound to land on runway 19. The tower controller subsequently cleared the approaching airplane to land on the closed runway. The airplane landed without incident, but passed within approximately 150 feet of two workers on the runway. The controller's written statement reads in its entirety, "While performing required non-control duties WDR 988 landed on runway 19."
Probable cause
The local air traffic controller's failure to follow published procedures and directives, resulting in a landing airplane coming in close proximity to runway workers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record OPS08IA009
- Event ID
- 20080714X01032
- Case number
- OPS08IA009
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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, damage. 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: 1336ca6d835bf35e951ea33cce146a84fabdbf91e22399e676e89ea2164d15c1; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:54:00.605Z.