Central Airlines Aero Commander 500-B accident
Aero Commander 500-B · Accident during takeoff
From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS) to New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26FA140
- 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
- Ongoing
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Aero Commander 500-B
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander 500
- 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
- N444CA
- Operator
- Central Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, MOTo New Century AirCenter Airport (IXD), New Century, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1964)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On March 17, 2026, about 0024 central daylight time, an Aero Commander 500-B airplane, N444CA, was destroyed when it was involved in an accident near Chesterfield, Missouri. The pilot was fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135 cargo flight. Preliminary ADS-B data revealed that the airplane departed from runway 26L at Spirit of St. Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, Missouri, about 0021:51. The airplane subsequently entered a modified right traffic pattern for the departure runway. The airplane altitudes varied from about 500 ft msl to 850 ft msl during that time. The final data point was recorded at 0023:57. The accident site was located about 46 ft southwest of the final data point.
Figure 1 – Accident flight (Preliminary ADS-B data) The airplane came to rest upright about 1,696 ft east of the runway 26L arrival threshold, and about 52 ft north of the runway centerline. The airframe structural components – fuselage, wings, empennage, and engines – were in position relative to a structurally intact airplane. A postimpact fire ensued and consumed the inboard portion of the left wing, the entire right wing, and a majority of the fuselage. The right horizontal stabilizer and right side of the vertical stabilizer and rudder were damaged by the fire.
Figure 2 – Accident site looking west (NTSB photo)
Figure 3 – Accident site looking east (NTSB photo) Two ground depressions immediately east of the airplane were consistent with the landing gear being extended at the time of impact. An area of burned vegetation extended about 300 ft from the wreckage and was about 50 ft wide.
Figure 4 – Airplane wreckage at accident site (NTSB photo) The investigation is on-going at this time.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26FA140
- Event ID
- 20260317202658
- Case number
- CEN26FA140
- 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. 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: 0c2c723208952129f20636789ed781da5d421fc1a6f553035cfed340580a377a; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:14:19.119Z.