CEN09WA022 · Cessna 402C
Cessna 402C · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Del Norte International Airport (MMAN) to La Paz
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09WA022
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 3 · 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 402C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- XC-HAQ
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Del Norte International Airport (MMAN), MonterreyTo La Paz
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On October 17, 2008, a Cessna 402C with Mexican Registration XC-HAQ departed on Runway 02 from Del Norte Airport (MMAN), near Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico at 1308 central daylight time (CDT) and was on climb out to cruise when radar contact was lost at 1315. The aircraft was found at approximately 1820 in a mountainous region near the village of Garcia, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The Cessna was owned and operated by the state government of Baja California Sur and was on a cross country flight to La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. A visual flight rules flight plan had been filed. The pilot, copilot and one passenger were fatally injured.
The airplane was located by search and rescue and found to have impacted impacted a vertical face on Cerro Del Fraile Mountain, at approximately 5,700 feet Mean Sea Level, 11 nautical miles from the point of departure, on an approximate magnetic heading of 254 degrees. Altitude required to clear the mountain was a minimum of 7,000 feet mean sea level. Local air traffic controllers had cleared the Cessna to a heading of 254 degrees after take off, to climb to 12,500 feet, and maintain visual meteorological conditions. Weather at the time was reported to be a broken ceiling at 3000 feet.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction and control of the Government of the Republic of Mexico. Any further information may be obtained from:
Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes Direccion General de Aeronautica Civil (DGAC) Providencia 807, Cuarto Piso Colonia del Valle, Codigo Postal 03100 Mexico, D.F.
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by, or obtained from the DGAC of the Republic of Mexico.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09WA022
- Event ID
- 20081018X14705
- Case number
- CEN09WA022
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: deb0ed3bf505fcc66e1bb07fbab05553d9b184705295d094c444aebd5bf65622; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:34:09.753Z.