NYC08LA291 · Cessna 441
Avian Cessna 441 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) to Flying Cloud Airport (FCM)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA291
- 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 441
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 441
- 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
- N441VB
- Operator
- Avian
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MDTo Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Minneapolis, MN
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the previous flight, as well as the accident event preflight procedures, start-up, and taxi were all normal. However, as the airplane accelerated during the takeoff roll, it moved "slightly to the left" on the runway. The pilot "added power on the left engine," but the airplane continued to the left, and the left wheel departed the left edge of the runway pavement. The pilot then aborted the takeoff, and continued efforts to correct the direction of travel by manipulating the engine power levers. The airplane veered further left, completely departed the paved surface, and struck an earthen mound about 200 feet to the left of the runway’s edge and 2,500 feet from the airplane’s starting point on the 5,000-foot runway. At the time, visual meteorological conditions prevailed with winds variable at 3 knots. The propellers were equipped with start locks which were required by checklists to be disengaged for taxi and flight. Although there were no discrete annunciators to advise start lock status, the airplane information manual provided means to recognize and correct when the start locks were not disengaged. Postaccident examination of the propeller assemblies revealed that the right propeller was properly configured for flight. However, the left propeller start lock mechanism was engaged, which resulted in negative propeller blade angles at the outboard stations and asymmetric thrust during the takeoff roll.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed decision to abort the takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's attempted takeoff with a propeller start lock inadvertently engaged.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA291
- Event ID
- 20080905X01387
- Case number
- NYC08LA291
- 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. 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: 926ca7692b1badff82931fea5dc21854dfd4d5490cf9cb15e97526078f2cef2b; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:09:35.081Z.