CEN16LA098 · Cessna 441
Cessna 441 · Accident: hard landing
From Detroit Lakes Airport (DTL) to Hector International Airport (FAR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA098
- 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 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
- N779CC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Detroit Lakes Airport (DTL), Detroit Lakes, MNTo Hector International Airport (FAR), Fargo, ND
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot reported that the accident flight was the airplane's first flight after a phase maintenance check, and that he was repositioning the airplane to an airport about 40 nautical miles away. While en route, the airplane experienced a series of avionics and fuel-related anomalies. The pilot eventually declared an emergency and was cleared to land at the destination airport. The first approach for landing in instrument meteorological conditions resulted in a missed approach. The pilot reported that, about this time, the airframe was accumulating ice and he cycled the deice boots.
During the second approach, the airplane broke out of the clouds, and the pilot proceeded to land. The pilot reported that, before he initiated the landing flare, he reduced engine power to idle, fully extended the flaps, and flared the airplane. He stated the airplane was shaking and shuddering, but no stall warning horn sounded, and then the "bottom fell out." The airplane landed hard, and the left engine's propeller blades struck the runway. The airplane incurred wing spar and propeller damage.
A postflight examination of the airplane revealed between ½ to 1 inch of rime ice on the leading edge surfaces of both wings, the horizontal stabilizer, and the vertical stabilizer. The pilot's operating handbook for the airplane stated that the deicing boots should be cycled as necessary when ice accumulation reached between ¼ and ½ inch. The amount of ice on the wing and empennage surfaces after the accident was consistent with the pilot not cycling the deice boots as prescribed, which resulted in an excessive ice accumulation on approach and a subsequent aerodynamic stall during the landing flare.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to cycle the surface deice boots during the instrument approach in icing conditions, which led to ice accumulation on the leading edges of the wings and empennage, and resulted in an aerodynamic stall and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA098
- Event ID
- 20160208X93451
- Case number
- CEN16LA098
- 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: 029c9d8dcca383e688824acb9e972786b9f7adb09f940799fb18de7633211dff; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:08:36.941Z.