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ERA09LA339 · Pilatus Aircraft Ltd PC-12/47

12 Jun 2009 · Bridgeport, CT, United States

Alpha Flying Pilatus Aircraft Ltd PC-12/47 · Accident: runway excursion during landing

From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD) to Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)

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Event

NTSB case
ERA09LA339
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
Instrument Meteorological Cond

Pilatus Aircraft Ltd PC-12/47

Aircraft type
Pilatus PC-12
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
N877AF
Operator
Alpha Flying
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD), Norwood, MATo Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CT
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 Subpart K: Fractional
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 · landing roll
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
Runway excursion
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 from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilots conducted the VOR 24 approach "to minimums," and when they were not able to visually obtain the runway, they conducted a missed approach. The pilots then received "vectors to final" for the ILS runway 6 approach, and visually acquired the runway lights at the decision altitude of 307 feet. They continued the landing, extending the landing gear and selecting the flaps to 30 degrees. The airplane touched down with less than 1,000 feet of runway remaining, and the pilots applied maximum reverse thrust and "more than average braking." The airplane began to hydroplane on the wet runway, and impacted a blast fence about 350 feet off the departure end of the runway. Both pilots reported they did not perform a landing distance calculation prior to landing and knew they were "landing long." They also reported no mechanical deficiencies with the airplane or engine. Examination of the engine revealed signatures of full power with the propeller in full reverse mode, at the time of impact. The airplane manufacturer recommended a landing configuration using 40 degrees of flaps. In a 40-degree flap configuration, with reverse thrust, the required landing distance for the airplane was 2,013 feet. In a configuration of 30 degrees of flaps, and no reverse thrust, the airplane required 2,933 feet of landing distance. The Safety Board issued recommendations regarding removal of the blast fence after two previous accidents, beginning 15 years prior to this accident.

Probable cause

The flight crew's misjudgment of speed and distance, which resulted in an overrun of the wet runway.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA09LA339
Event ID
20090612X14538
Case number
ERA09LA339
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. 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: c3e959642c005e51fc4fcb2806f76a80e1185e0eb4b8228773997dcf63711ded; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:23:56.460Z.