Ohara Flying Service II LP Cessna 421B accident
Cessna 421B · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) during initial climb
From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (KE38) to Odessa Schlemeyer Field (KODO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10MA367
- 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
- 5 · 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
Cessna 421B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N31AS
- Operator
- Ohara Flying Service II LP
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (KE38), Alpine, TXTo Odessa Schlemeyer Field (KODO), Odessa, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted terrain shortly after takeoff. The wreckage distribution was consistent with a high airspeed, low angle-of-attack impact. Examination of the ground scars and wreckage indicated that the landing gear was down, the flaps were down, and the engines were operating at a high power setting at the time of impact. An examination of the airframe, engines, and related systems revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures. According to the owner’s manual for the airplane, the flaps should have been retracted and the landing gear should have been brought up as soon as a climb profile was established. Based upon the location of the wreckage, the direction of the impact, and the location of the airport, it is likely that the airplane crashed within one or two minutes after takeoff. The extended landing gear and flaps degraded the climb performance of the airplane.
The pilot held an airline transport pilot certificate and had recent night flight experience. Toxicological results were positive for azacyclonol and ibuprofen but were not at levels that would have affected his performance. According to family members, the pilot normally slept from 2230 or 2300 to 0700; the accident occurred at 0015. Although the investigation was unable to determine how long the pilot had been awake before the accident or his sleep schedule in the three days prior to the accident, it is possible that the pilot was fatigued, as the accident occurred at a time when the pilot was normally asleep. The company did not have, and was not required to have guidance or a policy addressing fatigue management.
Probable cause
The degraded performance of the airplane due to the pilot not properly setting the flaps and retracting the landing gear after takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10MA367
- Event ID
- 20100704X15412
- Case number
- CEN10MA367
- 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: 2cc8591e6d64ca8480786cf094d183c06015f3a03bc5d3395eb90cbd53634c82; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:55:15.367Z.