CEN20LA174 · Cessna T240
Clearshot Air Cessna T240 · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Kirk Field (PGR) to Roger M Dreyer Memorial Airport (T20)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA174
- 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 T240
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 240
- 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
- N25HE
- Operator
- Clearshot Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kirk Field (PGR), Paragould, ARTo Roger M Dreyer Memorial Airport (T20), Gonzales, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2013)
- 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 · aborted after 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported landing about one-third of the way down the runway. He did not believe the airplane would be able to stop on the remaining runway and decided to execute a go-around. The pilot added full engine power and left the flaps at the takeoff position. He did not recall retracting the speedbrakes and noted the airplane seemed to get "no lift." The airplane subsequently departed the runway pavement, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing.
Postaccident examination revealed the cockpit speedbrake switch was in the UP position. The airframe manufacturer noted the speedbrakes were actuated by the instrument panel-mounted switch and will not retract automatically due to a go-around condition, by pressing the go-around button, or with throttle lever advancement. The pilot commented the go-around could have been initiated earlier; if so, he may have had more time to fully prepare for a go-around. It is likely that the pilot did not retract the speedbrakes during the delayed go-around attempt, which resulted in a reduction of lift and a subsequent runway excursion.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to retract the speedbrakes during a delayed go-around attempt, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA174
- Event ID
- 20200507X60215
- Case number
- CEN20LA174
- 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: 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: be7fd3b872b677499394e11bde468fd7d3010341249d75c9792524963342373c; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:33:49.536Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. T20 is Gonzales Municipal Airport in Gonzales, TX; the recorded city name is misspelled.