Execuflight Flight 1526
British Aerospace HS 125 700A · Stalled on approach due to pilot error
From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY) to Akron Fulton International Airport (AKR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16MA036
- 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
- 9 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 9
- Survivors
- 0
- 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
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
British Aerospace HS 125 700A
- Aircraft type
- British Aerospace HS-125
- 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
- N237WR
- Operator
- Execuflight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY), Dayton, OHTo Akron Fulton International Airport (AKR), Akron, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Organizational issues › Development
- Organizational issues › Management
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
- 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.
From the Wikipedia article
Execuflight Flight 1526 was a regularly scheduled charter flight from Dayton–Wright Brothers Airport to Akron Executive Airport in Ohio. On November 10, 2015, the aircraft operating the flight crashed into an apartment building while on approach into Akron, killing all 9 occupants onboard. The investigation found that the crew performed an unstabilized approach, unknowingly letting the aircraft descend too fast and letting the airspeed gradually decrease until it entered a stall from which the crew did not recover.
Accident
During approach the pilots noticed that the weather conditions were much worse than anticipated. The first officer, whose job it should have been to conduct the approach briefing, asked the captain to do so. The pilots then discussed an approach to runway 25. Indianapolis Air Traffic Control instructed the aircraft to fly over the "HUUVR" crossing at an altitude of 9,000 ft and contact air traffic control in Cleveland. The pilots then continued to discuss the approach to runway 25.
As the business jet approached Akron, its pilots were instructed to slow down the approach, as a small Piper PA-28-161 aircraft was supposed to land on the same runway. The crew of the BAe-125 was instructed to change course, slow down, and remain at an altitude of 3,000 ft. After landing, the Piper's crew reported that the cloud cover had broken in the conditions of minimal visibility. The crew was instructed to descend further by ATC, but failed to do so. Noticing that they had not descended, the first officer increased the descent rate (reaching up to 2,000 feet per minute which was twice the normal descent rate), and at the same time slowing the plane, almost 20 kn below the normal airspeed. The captain voiced his concerns on these matters but did not take action.
About 14 seconds after the minimum altitude of 500 ft was reached, the airspeed had already decayed to 98 kn. The aircraft entered a stall and banked sharply to the left before crashing into an apartment building 2 mi from the runway threshold, exploding on impact and destroying the building. The crash was captured on video by a neighbouring resident in an adjacent apartment and was also captured on CCTV cameras nearby. The aircraft was completely destroyed by the impact and fire. All seven passengers and two crew members died in the crash. No one on the ground was injured or killed.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was assigned to investigate the cause of the accident. A review of the two pilots' training records revealed that the captain had been fired by his previous employer after failing to show up for training. The first officer had also been fired by his last employer for poor performance in training. The president of Execuflight was aware of the shortcomings of the two pilots but had decided to hire them. The captain had been hired because of his extensive experience with the BAe-125 with the president of the airline company unaware of the captain's poor performance during flight training. The first officer was hired on the basis of a recommendation from an airline pilot and also flew a test flight to assess his flight performance. No effort was made to contact the pilots' previous employers and inquire about their specific deficits, leading to both being hired by Execuflight soon after.
The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was:
Text from the Wikipedia article “Execuflight Flight 1526” (revision 1372043025, 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 Safety Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/aviation.aspx. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-16/03.
On November 10, 2015, about 1453 eastern standard time (EST), Execuflight flight 1526, a British Aerospace HS 125-700A (Hawker 700A), N237WR, departed controlled flight while on a nonprecision localizer approach to runway 25 at Akron Fulton International Airport (AKR) and impacted a four-unit apartment building in Akron, Ohio. The captain, first officer, and seven passengers died; no one on the ground was injured. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces and postcrash fire. The airplane was registered to Rais Group International NC LLC and operated by Execuflight under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 135 as an on-demand charter flight. Instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) prevailed, and an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan was filed. The flight departed from Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport (MGY), Dayton, Ohio, about 1413 and was destined for AKR.
Probable cause
The flight crew's mismanagement of the approach and multiple deviations from company standard operating procedures, which placed the airplane in an unsafe situation and led to an unstabilized approach, a descent below minimum descent altitude without visual contact with the runway environment, and an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident were Execuflight's casual attitude toward compliance with standards; its inadequate hiring, training, and operational oversight of the flight crew; the company's lack of a formal safety program; and the Federal Aviation Administration's insufficient oversight of the company's training program and flight operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Execuflight Flight 1526
- Article
- Execuflight Flight 1526
- Revision
- 1372043025 · 2026-08-30 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q103845665
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record CEN16MA036
- Event ID
- 20151110X65615
- Case number
- CEN16MA036
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Execuflight Flight 1526" (page 71341669, revision 1372043025); merged with NTSB case CEN16MA036 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record CEN16MA036: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record CEN16MA036
- Map position
- NTSB record CEN16MA036: NTSB API eventLatitude/eventLongitude
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record CEN16MA036: 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 CEN16MA036: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record CEN16MA036: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record CEN16MA036: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Execuflight Flight 1526" and NTSB case CEN16MA036, 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: 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.