CEN15CA304 · Cessna 340
Petrojet Services Group Cessna 340 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS) to Bismarck Municipal Airport (BIS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15CA304
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 340
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N5139J
- Operator
- Petrojet Services Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS), South St. Paul, MNTo Bismarck Municipal Airport (BIS), Bismark, ND
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was departing runway 16 on an instrument flight rules flight plan. After traveling down approximately two-thirds of the 4,002 foot runway, he elected to abort the takeoff after he felt the airplane was not able to climb and continue to accelerate. During the aborted takeoff, the airplane departed the runway surface and entered the grass overrun area which was covered with wet dew from the morning environmental conditions. The pilot attempted to stop the airplane; however, the airplane skidded and impacted a fence. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right main wing spar and fuselage. The examination of the airplane revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The airplane's inability to takeoff for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies. The aborted takeoff resulted in a runway overrun and impact with a fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15CA304
- Event ID
- 20150713X43208
- Case number
- CEN15CA304
- 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: 236db7e9d876b0c1186de0a0eb709ef59538d69e3ade7563555b548f9fb87fa1; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:31:26.145Z.