ERA20CA139 · Beech 200 B200
L C Whitford Beech 200 B200 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Cattaraugus County-Olean Airport (OLE) to Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA139
- 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
Beech 200 B200
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 200
- 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
- N200HF
- Operator
- L C Whitford
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cattaraugus County-Olean Airport (OLE), Olean, NYTo Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU), Morristown, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2004)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the descent for an instrument approach in instrument meteorological conditions, he saw an area of patchy fog over the approach end of the runway and leveled off to avoid the fog. He landed the airplane with about 3,000 ft of the nearly 6,000-ft-long runway remaining and felt the airplane hydroplaning while using a combination of wheel braking and the beta range of the propellers. The airplane subsequently overran the end of the runway onto grass and mud, which resulted in the nose landing gear collapsing. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The airplane hydroplaning while landing on a wet runway, which degraded its braking capability and resulted in a runway overrun onto grass and mud and the nose landing gear collapsing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper decision to land the airplane until it was near the runway midpoint due to fog over the approach end of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA139
- Event ID
- 20200105X63521
- Case number
- ERA20CA139
- 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: ee27cc25fa5c8104bb95bcc0839bc5000f8d55d9abd5b43d08b9af7f040a1d14; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:52:09.475Z.