WPR21LA054 · General Atomics MQ-9 B
Customs and Border Patrol General Atomics MQ-9 B · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Sierra Vista Municipal Airport / Libby Army Air Field (KFHU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA054
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Government
- 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
General Atomics MQ-9 B
- Aircraft type
- General Atomics MQ-9
- 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
- CBP233
- Operator
- Customs and Border Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sierra Vista Municipal Airport / Libby Army Air Field (KFHU), Sierra Vista, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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 · VFR go-around
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Operations Supervisor reported that the instructional flight with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was programmed for a single takeoff and traffic pattern to a full-stop landing. During the pre-landing checks, the pilot under instruction selected the incorrect landing profile, which did not account for the current runway displaced threshold because of runway construction. Shortly before touchdown, the pilot initiated a go-around but the landing gear impacted a runway trench, and subsequently the UAV impacted the ground. A post-crash fire ensued and the UAV was destroyed. The supervisor added that neither the instructor pilot nor the pilot receiving instruction spotted the incorrect selection during the pre-landing checks.
Probable cause
The pilot’s incorrect automated landing profile selection, which resulted in an impact with a runway trench. Contributing to the accident was the pilot receiving instruction's and instructor's failure to spot the incorrect landing profile selection during prelanding checks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA054
- Event ID
- 20201113102286
- Case number
- WPR21LA054
- 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, cause areas. 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: 1e2123bb2e18af9f68ea2d65c153721d5a4f55c93f6f45d8e48394a7949b18d0; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:22:54.200Z.