2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash
Global Exec Avaition Learjet LR60 · Runway overrun due to maintenance error and pilot error
From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (KCAE) to Van Nuys Airport (KVNY)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA08MA098
- 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
- 4 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 6
- 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
- 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
Learjet LR60
- Aircraft type
- Learjet LR60
- 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
- N999LJ
- Operator
- Global Exec Avaition
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (KCAE), Columbia, SCTo Van Nuys Airport (KVNY), Van Nuys, CA
- 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 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 · rejected 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
On the night of September 19, 2008, a Learjet 60 business jet (registration N999LJ operating for Global Exec Aviation, crashed during take-off from Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina.
Four of the six people on board died in the crash. The survivors, musician Travis Barker and disc jockey Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein, were critically injured. The jet had been due to fly Barker, Goldstein, and their entourage to Van Nuys, California, after their TRV$DJAM band's performance at a concert in Five Points.
Accident
Just before midnight, the plane was heading down the runway for takeoff when the occupants heard a loud bang. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, air traffic controllers saw sparks emanating from the plane. After experiencing a tire failure and aborting the take-off, the co-pilot notified air traffic control to send out emergency equipment because the aircraft would be going off the end of the runway. Barker and Goldstein stated that the aircraft felt "out of control" and was swaying back and forth.
The aircraft overran the runway end, crashed through the airport boundary fence, crossed South Carolina Highway 302, and came to rest on an embankment, bursting into flames. It took firefighters more than an hour to get the fire under control.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
On the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), the pilot indicated she was reacting to the apparent sound of a burst tire and attempting a rejected takeoff. Pieces of a tire were found at the crash site. The plane did not carry a flight data recorder (FDR).
The National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) report attributed the accident to tire bursts during take-off and the captain's resulting decision to abort at high speed. Several tires were severely under-inflated and punctured during take-off. Pieces of the tires damaged the plane's hydraulic system, causing the plane's brakes to fail. The captain aborted at 144 kn. The normal operating procedure for Learjet 60s is never to abort above the "go/no-go" decision speed V1, which for this particular take-off was 136 kn.
The captain therefore aborted the takeoff after V1, violating these operating procedures. The first officer can be heard saying the appropriate "go go go" on the CVR. A contributing factor was the engines giving full power, even though the pilots were applying reverse thrust. The reason for this was the aircraft's air/ground sensor was damaged by debris and caused the sensor to go to "air" mode. Investigators also found that the captain had limited experience in the Learjet 60 and that the company's tire pressure inspections were inadequate.
Global Exec Aviation estimated that the tire pressure had been checked three weeks before the crash, but investigators stated that the type of tires on the Learjet 60 at the time lose approximately two percent of their pressure per day and would need to be replaced after eight days if they were not properly maintained. Additionally, investigators noted a design flaw in the thrust reverser system which the NTSB believed may have contributed, increasing the severity of the crash.
Text from the Wikipedia article “2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash” (revision 1371993077, 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 NTSB’s full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/publictn.htm. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-10/02. On September 19, 2008, about 2353 eastern daylight time, a Bombardier Learjet Model 60, N999LJ, owned by Inter Travel and Services, Inc., and operated by Global Exec Aviation, overran runway 11 during a rejected takeoff at Columbia Metropolitan Airport, Columbia, South Carolina. The captain, the first officer, and two passengers were killed; two other passengers were seriously injured. The nonscheduled domestic passenger flight to Van Nuys, California, was operated under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed, and an instrument flight rules flight plan was filed.
Probable cause
The operator’s inadequate maintenance of the airplane’s tires, which resulted in multiple tire failures during takeoff roll due to severe underinflation, and the captain’s execution of a rejected takeoff (RTO) after V1, which was inconsistent with her training and standard operating procedures. Contributing to the accident were (1) deficiencies in Learjet’s design of and the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) certification of the Learjet Model 60’s thrust reverser system, which permitted the failure of critical systems in the wheel well area to result in uncommanded forward thrust that increased the severity of the accident; (2) the inadequacy of Learjet’s safety analysis and the FAA’s review of it, which failed to detect and correct the thrust reverser and wheel well design deficiencies after a 2001 uncommanded forward thrust accident; (3) inadequate industry training standards for flight crews in tire failure scenarios; and (4) the flight crew’s poor crew resource management (CRM).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: 2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash
- Revision
- 1371993077 · 2026-08-29 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q4611923
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA08MA098
- Event ID
- 20081003X16308
- Case number
- DCA08MA098
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash" (page 19401090, revision 1371993077); merged with NTSB case DCA08MA098 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA08MA098: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA08MA098
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA08MA098: NTSB API eventLatitude/eventLongitude
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA08MA098: 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 DCA08MA098: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA08MA098: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA08MA098: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash" and NTSB case DCA08MA098, 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-09-20.