Martinaire Aviation Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: ground collision while standing
From El Paso International Airport (ELP) to Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11CA309
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Cessna 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N208TF
- Operator
- Martinaire Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TXTo Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB), Lubbock, 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the pilot prepared for the evening cargo flight, the wind was reported as being strong and gusting. The pilot reported that he radioed the air traffic controller for his flight clearance and the current wind conditions. Since the wind was higher than previously reported, the pilot told the controller that he would wait before taxiing further. The pilot added that, after deciding to delay the flight and before he could shut down the airplane, a large gust of wind pushed the airplane’s nose left and lifted the left wing. The airplane’s propeller and right wing impacted the ground, bending the airplane’s right wing. At about the time of the accident the automated weather reporting station, located on the airport, reported the wind at 270 degrees at 36 knots gusting to 48 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control as result of the gusting wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11CA309
- Event ID
- 20110428X00638
- Case number
- CEN11CA309
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-04-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1a48b18d296b6de98e326c0d30473f27c5231675fbb16686c47a4909f1a66867; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:06:33.592Z.