FlighTime Business Jets Pilatus Aircraft Ltd PC-12/47E incident
Pilatus Aircraft Ltd PC-12/47E · Incident: aircraft loading event before flight
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) to Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13IA563
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Pilatus Aircraft Ltd PC-12/47E
- Aircraft type
- Pilatus PC-12
- 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
- N617BG
- Operator
- FlighTime Business Jets
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TXTo Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB), Lubbock, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Aircraft loading event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Immediately after the airplane lifted off the runway, the pilot lost pitch control, which resulted in a series of pitch oscillations and cockpit stall warnings. The pilot aborted the takeoff, and the airplane subsequently impacted the departure runway. The pilot subsequently stopped the airplane on the remaining runway.
The flight was being operated as a commercial on-demand passenger flight. According to the operator's operations specifications, actual passenger and carry-on baggage weights were required to be used to determine a flight's weight and balance; however, the trip schedule that the operator provided to the pilot before the flight did not include the actual passenger weights nor the carry-on baggage weights. A postincident review of weight and balance information revealed that the pilot failed to identify that the baggage weights were not included on the trip schedule and that he subsequently improperly calculated the airplane's weight and balance, which resulted in the exceedance of the aft center-of-gravity and weight limits for the flight. Further, the operator did not ensure that the airplane was loaded properly.
Examination of recorded flight data from the onboard lightweight data recorder (LDR) and postincident examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The LDR also recorded cockpit audio; however, download of the cockpit audio revealed that 2 hours of the recording, which included the incident flight, had been overwritten before the National Transportation Safety Board received the LDR.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper weight and balance calculations, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its weight and center-of-gravity limits and led to a loss of pitch control during takeoff, and the operator’s failure to obtain required weight information and to ensure that the flight was properly loaded.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13IA563
- Event ID
- 20130927X25443
- Case number
- CEN13IA563
- 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: 727cf44324dc128e93c11ddcef6ed0962e393cff6a6f6d18fcf8cf9d85584670; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:55:01.111Z.