CEN10TA355 · Lockheed P2V-5
(USDA) Forestry Service Lockheed P2V-5 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10TA355
- 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
- Government
- 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
Lockheed P2V-5
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed P2
- 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
- N1386C
- Operator
- (USDA) Forestry Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, COTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, CO
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was returning from a retardant drop on a forest fire when the crew noted that the airplane’s main hydraulic system had failed. They configured the airplane using the emergency systems and declared an emergency. After landing on the runway, the pilot elected to exit the runway using the high-speed taxiway that went to the tanker base ramp. When he tried to stop the airplane using the emergency system brakes, there was no braking response. The airplane crossed the tanker ramp, exited the prepared surface, and went through the airport perimeter fence, down an embankment, and onto a road. According to the airplane flight manual, the procedure for a hydraulic system failure is to land and stop on the runway using the emergency brake and accumulator pressure. A postaccident examination of the airplane’s hydraulic system showed a rupture in the line that interconnects the main hydraulic system and retardant tank system. No other systems anomalies were found. The crew later reported that when the co-pilot lowered the nose gear using the emergency gear extension system, she did not return the emergency nose gear extension system selector to the “neutral” position, and it remained in the “bypass” position. This shut off the emergency system hydraulic system pressure to the elevator flight control and emergency brakes.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to follow published emergency procedures by taxiing to the parking ramp with a known hydraulic system failure. Contributing to the accident was the co-pilot’s improper selection of the bypass position on the emergency nose gear extension system, which shut off emergency hydraulic system pressure to the brakes, and a ruptured hydraulic line, which resulted in a total loss of the main hydraulic system pressure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10TA355
- Event ID
- 20100629X33419
- Case number
- CEN10TA355
- 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: fb23f5808dc06902707eee03ca98235fa3a88127b8220f07d9963babfbd7a807; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:32:22.140Z.