CEN15LA418 · Cessna 421B B
Cessna 421B B · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Platteville Municipal Airport (PVB) to James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA418
- 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 421B B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N813CA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Platteville Municipal Airport (PVB), Platteville, WITo James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY), Dayton, OH
- 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
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that he completed the pretakeoff checklist, which included a run-up of each engine; no anomalies were noted. During the takeoff roll, the pilot noticed a decrease in manifold pressure in the right engine and felt a power reduction. He attempted to abort the takeoff with about 1,000 ft of runway pavement remaining. However, the airplane was traveling at 85 knots at the time of his decision, and the airplane would have needed about 2,400 ft of runway to stop. The airplane departed the runway surface, continued through a grassy area, and came to a stop in an adjacent field, which resulted in substantial damage to the nose and wing.
During the postaccident examination of the right engine, the engine was successfully test run, and no anomalies were found during the run that would have precluded normal operation or production of rated horsepower. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot choosing to abort the takeoff with inadequate runway distance remaining after a reported loss of engine power. The exact magneto timing was not determined, and although it could have affected the engine performance, the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Probable cause
The partial loss of right engine power for undetermined reasons with insufficient runway remaining for the aborted takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA418
- Event ID
- 20150923X21445
- Case number
- CEN15LA418
- 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: 3294242d9f77a7cc77c96034c61761c6a6ddaa565f8748b6c188b6776e7b0c19; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:48:28.818Z.