ERA21LA134 · Cessna 421 C
Wheels Up Cessna 421 C · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA134
- 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
- 0
- 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 421 C
- 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
- N84HA
- Operator
- Wheels Up
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Igor I Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR), Bridgeport, CTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1984)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After the pilot performed a GPS approach in light snow and with 0.5-mile visibility, the airplane touched down on the left edge of the snow-covered runway and struck a snow berm. The airplane slid along the snow berm before it rotated about 210° and came to a stop. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage, the pressure bulkhead, and the floor area forward of the bulkhead.
The runway, its markings, and the runway lighting were covered in snow that was 3 to 4 inches deep. The snow depth, combined with the limited visibility, likely resulted in the pilot’s difficulty in identifying the runway edge from the snow berm on the left side of the runway. The notices to air mission (NOTAM) published for the airport did not contain any field conditions noting the snow depth or the snow-covered runway lights. Furthermore, the airport manager, who was new to the position, was not able to issue a NOTAM about the runway conditions because he had not yet been authorized to do so.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to continue the approach to a snow-covered runway in low-visibility conditions with limited ability to visually differentiate the left runway edge from the snow berm that ran along that side of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA134
- Event ID
- 20210222102658
- Case number
- ERA21LA134
- 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: 9a5eeed8daa49e803960b4952427ea140bdfa68ec6ae755e0ba6db28a9492805; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:44:01.980Z.