ERA12CA118 · Cessna 120
Cessna 120 · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Turners Falls Airport (0B5) to Orange Municipal Airport (ORE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA118
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 120
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 120
- 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
- N89809
- Operator
- Roske John L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Turners Falls Airport (0B5), Montague, MATo Orange Municipal Airport (ORE), Orange, MA
- 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: General Aviation
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the takeoff roll, as the airplane accelerated to 40 mph, the engine sputtered, and he reduced power with sufficient runway remaining to stop; however, the sputtering ceased, and he then added power to continue the takeoff attempt. The engine sputtered a second time, and the pilot reduced engine power again. At that point, he was concerned about the length of runway remaining and elected to steer off the left side of the runway, rather than risk going off the end of the runway and down into a ditch. As the airplane departed the left side of the runway, it struck a runway sign and sustained substantial damage to the aft fuselage and empennage. The pilot subsequently defueled and moved the airplane before it could be examined. Therefore, it was not possible to verify the fuel quantity or determine if any fuel contamination was present. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures. The pilot reported that he should have aborted the takeoff earlier.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in performing a rejected takeoff after experiencing an intermittent loss of engine power, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA118
- Event ID
- 20111221X54903
- Case number
- ERA12CA118
- 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: 56bdf9e8fdcea8a7b59752bc07e0933995dcef68220ccb30ad9aca7193bd6ad4; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:01:10.423Z.