CEN21LA190 · Gates Learjet CORP. 35A
Medway Air Ambulance Gates Learjet CORP. 35A · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Centennial Airport (KAPA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA190
- 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
Gates Learjet CORP. 35A
- Aircraft type
- Learjet 35
- 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
- N354EF
- Operator
- Medway Air Ambulance
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (KAPA), Englewood, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew was conducting an instrument approach to the destination airport with the captain as the pilot monitoring and the copilot as the pilot flying. The airplane exited an overcast layer of clouds about 650 to 700 ft above ground level and about 1/2 mile right of the runway centerline. The captain requested the flight controls and returned the airplane to the runway extended centerline about 100 ft above ground level and reduced the throttles to “idle.” During landing, the stick shaker activated, and the captain applied engine power; however, the airplane stalled, and the right wingtip fuel tank impacted the runway, resulting in substantial damage.
There was no mechanical malfunction/failure of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The operator’s operations manual specified that a stabilized approach should be established no later than 500 ft above airport elevation.
Probable cause
The flight crew’s improper decision to continue the unstabilized approach, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and impact with the runway during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA190
- Event ID
- 20210416102925
- Case number
- CEN21LA190
- 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, coordinates, 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: 18d8e8dd48eb65e4bb04feab4a93bde29654e9882422c6043b4a9434fe9869c5; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:57:25.625Z.