WPR15TA002 · Rockwell International 690B
United States Forest Service Rockwell International 690B · Accident: abrupt maneuver during landing
From Nevada County Airport (GOO) to Nevada County Airport (GOO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15TA002
- 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
- Government
- 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
Rockwell International 690B
- Aircraft type
- Rockwell 690
- 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
- N700PQ
- Operator
- United States Forest Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nevada County Airport (GOO), Grass Valley, CATo Nevada County Airport (GOO), Grass Valley, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot reported that, after returning from a fire mission, the airplane floated over the runway and landed long (about 1,500 to 1,800 ft down the runway, which left a maximum of about 2,850 ft of runway remaining). He reduced the power setting to flight idle and then adjusted the thrust levers to (beta) reverse. As the landing roll continued, the pilot adjusted the levers for less reverse thrust. Aware that the ground speed was too fast to make the normal exit turnoff, he applied full reverse thrust again. The airplane then swerved left, departed the runway, impacted some boulders, and came to rest upright in a drainage area.
A postaccident examination of the brake system and engines revealed no evidence of mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. If the pilot had initiated a go-around when he realized the airplane was going to land long, he would not have had to modulate the reverse thrust multiple times to make the turnoff.
Probable cause
The pilot’s unstabilized approach and failure to go around and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15TA002
- Event ID
- 20141006X44407
- Case number
- WPR15TA002
- 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: e9e8727716634639883426ca53dc7c1ea44b80783efe96f1a7667c4ea223f85d; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:49:58.077Z.