ERA13CA415 · Hawker Beechcraft Corp G36
Hawker Beechcraft Corp G36 · Accident: loss of lift during takeoff
From Katama Airpark (1B2) to Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA415
- 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
Hawker Beechcraft Corp G36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N771WG
- Operator
- William J Greco · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Katama Airpark (1B2), Edgartown, MATo Hartford Brainard Airport (HFD), Hartford, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2008)
- 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
- 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
- Loss of lift
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he utilized the checklist and set elevator trim to "almost neutral" with one notch of flaps for departure. During the takeoff roll, the pilot felt that the airplane wanted to lift off earlier than he was accustomed and he had to hold the nose down. When the pilot finally rotated the nose, the airplane "jumped up quicker than normal" and he kept the nose down. After the airplane began to increase airspeed and climb, the pilot raised the landing gear. The pilot then felt a gust of wind, and the airplane drifted to the left. The pilot corrected the airplane back to the runway heading, but it then began to descend. He pulled the power back and landed the airplane gear up on the grass airstrip, resulting in substantial damage to the lower fuselage. The pilot reported no preexisting mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. He also reported the wind as being from 20 degrees to the right of the runway at 14, gusting to 22 knots. According to a representative of the airplane manufacturer, landing gear retraction takes 3 to 6 seconds, and during the process, movement of the inboard landing gear doors creates additional parasitic drag. He also noted that in previous cases, pilots have taken off at lower airspeeds than normal then retracted the landing gear, which resulted in the airplane's settling back down to the surface instead of climbing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to achieve a proper takeoff profile prior to raising the landing gear resulting in a collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA415
- Event ID
- 20130916X84712
- Case number
- ERA13CA415
- 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: 5ce98290708983f769859863f0d81812a2b10199c6d981365e65ec236acf34db; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:52:31.069Z.