Corporate Airlines Flight 5966
British Aerospace Jetstream 32 · Controlled flight into terrain due to pilot error and pilot fatigue
From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (KSTL) to Kirksville Regional Airport (KIRK)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA05MA004
- 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
- 13 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 15
- Survivors
- 2
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 2
- 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
- Airline
- 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
British Aerospace Jetstream 32
- Flight
- CEA5966
- Aircraft type
- British Aerospace JETSTREAM 32
- 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
- N875JX
- Operator
- Corporate Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (KSTL), St. Louis, MOTo Kirksville Regional Airport (KIRK), Kirksville, MO
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Flightcrew › Crew/group coordination, inadequate
- Flightcrew › Minimum descent altitude, continued below
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
Corporate Airlines Flight 5966 was a scheduled passenger flight from St. Louis to Kirksville, Missouri, United States. On October 19, 2004, the British Aerospace Jetstream 32 aircraft operating the flight crashed on approach to Kirksville Regional Airport as a result of pilot error, killing 13 of the 15 people aboard.
Flight information
Flight 5966 was a flight route from St. Louis Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, to Kirksville Regional Airport in unincorporated Adair County, Missouri, near the city of Kirksville. Corporate Airlines (later RegionsAir, now defunct) flew the route as part of the AmericanConnection network, an affiliate of American Airlines.
The captain was 48-year-old Kim William Sasse, a former flight instructor who had been with Corporate Airlines since 2001. He had logged 4,234 flight hours, including 2,510 hours on the Jetstream 32. The first officer was 29-year-old Jonathan Palmer, also a former flight instructor. Palmer had been hired by Corporate Airlines only three months before the accident and had 2,856 flight hours, only 107 of which were on the Jetstream 32.
Accident
On October 19, 2004, the Jetstream 32 twin-engine turboprop flying the route crashed on the approach to Kirksville Airport. The crash killed both pilots and 11 of the 13 passengers aboard. The two surviving passengers were seriously injured.
Some of the 13 passengers were doctors from other states who had been due to attend a seminar at the A. T. Still University. These included Steven Z. Miller, who was killed in the crash. Dr. Miller was director of pediatric emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, a prominent figure in the "humanism in medicine" movement. The two passengers who survived were John Krogh (68) and his assistant Wendy Bonham (44).
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of the accident was:
[T]he pilots' failure to follow established procedures and properly conduct a non-precision instrument approach at night in instrument meteorological conditions, including their descent below the minimum descent altitude before required visual cues were available (which continued un-moderated until the airplane struck the trees) and their failure to adhere to the established division of duties between the flying and non-flying (monitoring) pilot.
The NTSB analysis of the cockpit voice recorder suggested that: both pilots were looking outside the cockpit for visual cues to the location of the airport, when the captain should have been paying attention to his instruments; the first officer did not challenge the captain to leave the visual cues task to him; thus, combining into the captain failing to realize how low he had descended below the minimum descent altitude. The pilots had also worked a 14-hour duty day, including six flights, which was allowed under regulations that had last been updated in 1964, ignoring the four decades of research, performed in the interim, into the debilitating effects of pilot fatigue. The report recognized these two issues, stating that:
Contributing to the accident were the pilots' failure to make standard callouts and the current Federal Aviation Regulations that allow pilots to descend below the minimum descent altitude into a region in which safe obstacle clearance is not assured based upon seeing only the airport approach lights. The pilots' failure to establish and maintain a professional demeanor during the flight and their fatigue likely contributed to their degraded performance.
The report included a recommendation that the FAA should revise its regulations, within two years, taking into account scientific research on pilot fatigue.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Corporate Airlines Flight 5966” (revision 1373228521, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/publictn.htm. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-06/01.
On October 19, 2004, about 1937 central daylight time, Corporate Airlines (doing business as American Connection) flight 5966, a BAE Systems BAE-J3201, N875JX, struck trees on final approach and crashed short of runway 36 at Kirksville Regional Airport (IRK), Kirksville, Missouri. The flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 as a scheduled passenger flight from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, in St. Louis, Missouri, to IRK. The captain, first officer, and 11 of the 13 passengers were fatally injured, and 2 passengers received serious injuries. The airplane was destroyed by impact and a postimpact fire. Night instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) prevailed at the time of the accident, and the flight operated on an instrument flight rules flight plan.
Probable cause
the pilots' failure to follow established procedures and properly conduct a nonprecision instrument approach at night in IMC, including their descent below the minimum descent altitude (MDA) before required visual cues were available (which continued unmoderated until the airplane struck the trees) and their failure to adhere to the established division of duties between the flying and nonflying (monitoring) pilot.
Contributing to the accident was the pilots' failure to make standard callouts and the current Federal Aviation Regulations that allow pilots to descend below the MDA into a region in which safe obstacle clearance is not assured based upon seeing only the airport approach lights. The pilots' unprofessional behavior during the flight and their fatigue likely contributed to their degraded performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Corporate Airlines Flight 5966
- Revision
- 1373228521 · 2026-09-04 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q5172397
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA05MA004
- Event ID
- 20041020X01659
- Case number
- DCA05MA004
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Corporate Airlines Flight 5966" (page 1095573, revision 1373228521); merged with NTSB case DCA05MA004 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA05MA004: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA05MA004
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA05MA004: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA05MA004: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record DCA05MA004: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA05MA004: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA05MA004: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Corporate Airlines Flight 5966" and NTSB case DCA05MA004, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-10-20.