GAA15CA215 · Cessna 560XL ENCORE
Snow Peak Ventures Cessna 560XL ENCORE · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From U77 · Spanish Fork, UT to St George Regional Airport (SGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA215
- 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 560XL ENCORE
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 560
- 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
- N560JF
- Operator
- Snow Peak Ventures
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U77 · Spanish Fork, UTTo St George Regional Airport (SGU), ST GEORGE, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2001)
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During taxi to the runway, the Captain reported that he originally planned to back taxi on the runway, but he observed a gyroplane waiting to takeoff and decided to taxi on the closed taxiways to allow the other aircraft to depart. As the taxi progressed on the closed taxiway, the Captain reported that his First Officer stated, "Watch that left side!" When the Captain looked to his left, he observed the left wing of the airplane strike a construction vehicle that was parked next to the taxiway. After the collision, the Captain stopped the airplane and shutdown the engines on the taxiway. The Captain stated there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The left wing sustained substantial damage.
The Captain stated that there were no barricades present on the closed taxiways, and the construction vehicle was not marked or flagged. The Captain also reported that he checked the notices to airmen (NOTAMs) during preflight and was aware of the taxiway closures at the departure airport. During postaccident interviews, an employee of the fixed based operator (FBO) stated that he moved the barricades on the closed taxiways earlier in the morning so that another airplane could depart. The airport manager stated that the taxiways were published closed and he did not provide any instructions to move the barricades.
Probable cause
The Captain's decision to taxi on a closed taxiway, which resulted in a collision with a parked construction vehicle. Contributing to the accident was a ground crew employee's decision to move barricades from the closed taxiway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA215
- Event ID
- 20150806X61602
- Case number
- GAA15CA215
- 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: 3021d92c3bcb0d0367a5225e1c05ddbaec938b35992fb99f04329dcc92649d2b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:38:08.258Z.