Westair Aviation (Pty) Cessna 441 accident
Cessna 441 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Oranjemund Airport (FYOG) to Cape Town International Airport (FACT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA15WA187
- 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
- Final · SACAA final report, 20 Sept 2017
- Event fatalities
- 5 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- Not recorded
Cessna 441
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 441
- 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
- V5-NRS
- Operator
- Westair Aviation (Pty)
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oranjemund Airport (FYOG), Oranjemund, NamibiaTo Cape Town International Airport (FACT), Cape Town International Airport
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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
- Approach · IFR initial approach
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The government of South Africa has notified the NTSB of an accident involving a Cessna 441 airplane that occurred on August 17, 2015. The NTSB has appointed a U.S. Accredited Representative to assist the government of South Africa's investigation under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13 as the State of Manufacturer and Design of the airplane and engine.All investigative information will be released by the government of South Africa.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA15WA187
- Event ID
- 20150921X24201
- Case number
- DCA15WA187
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7f427a211ca999029337efa03f53d26b73f4b678724f20155e4f5c84f8af6e92; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:31:12.078Z.
- Checked against the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA), Accident and Incident Investigations Division final report (2017-09-20) on 2026-09-18. The report states the same registration and damage. Taken from the report: fatalities, ground fatalities, departure, destination and operator. Shown unchanged where the report gives another value or wording: date (shown 2015-08-17; report 2015-08-16). Not checked: place, crash-site coordinates, flight number, aircraft type and type of operation.