Gulfstream Aerospace Flight 153
Gulfstream GVI G650 · Stall and loss of control during single-engine takeoff
From Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW) to Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA11MA076
- 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
- 4
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Gulfstream GVI G650
- Aircraft type
- Gulfstream GVI
- 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
- N652GD
- Operator
- Gulfstream Aerospace
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW), Roswell, NMTo Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW), Roswell, NM
- 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 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
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Organizational issues › Development
- Organizational issues › Management
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
Gulfstream Aerospace Flight 153 was a test flight with a Gulfstream G650 on the April 2, 2011. The second G650 test aircraft crashed during takeoff from the Roswell International Air Center, New Mexico, killing the four crew members on board.
The aircraft was conducting a test involving a single-engine start to simulate an engine failure. The G650 became airborne briefly at a high angle of attack before its right wingtip hit the runway; then it slid on the ground, struck a concrete berm, and caught fire.
Background
For the certification of the Gulfstream G650, Gulfstream Aerospace maintained an ambitious flight test program. The manufacturer expected a certification of the aircraft type in the 3rd quarter 2011.
Accident
The aircraft was conducting test flight, with a takeoff-performance test during which an engine failure was simulated by reducing the right engine's thrust to idle. The objective of this maneuver was to assess the takeoff distance at minimal flap position during an engine failure scenario. The takeoff occurred at 9:34 a.m. Shortly after takeoff at a high angle of attack, the aircraft began to roll uncontrollably to the right. The Gulfstream made contact with the ground on its right wingtip and subsequently veered off the runway. The landing gear was sheared off, and the aircraft collided with a concrete structure and a weather station. It continued to slide along the ground and caught fire. Tragically, all four occupants lost their lives, and the aircraft was nearly completely consumed by the fire.
All four crew members initially survived the crash and impact. The leg of Captain Crenshaw was pinned in the wreckage. The other three crew members were able to get out their chairs and reached the main cabin door. However, they were not able to open it due to the flames and smoke by which they died. The team members on the ground went to the aircraft from the telemetry trailer, but were not able to reach it closely due to the heat. Four minutes after impact, the fire trucks arrived on the scene.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board took over the investigation into the cause of the accident. Before the official report the Board released a list of 19 findings, a statement of probable cause and ten recommendations.
The accident happened because the right wing stalled shortly after lift-off, rolling the aircraft. The right wing stalled due to the presence of a crosswind from the left side and a sideslip caused by having the right engine at idle. The stall was caused due to the exceeding of the incorrectly calculated critical angle of attack. There were two earlier wing drop-off events of a Aircraft 6002: Flight 88 in November 2010 (with the same pilot-in-command on board) and Flight 132 in March 2011 (Flight 132). These two wing-drop incidents had not been sufficiently investigated by Gulfstream, so that the final cause could only be determined after the crash.
Three main causes were identified during the investigation:
Gulfstream's failure to properly calculate and validate the take-off speeds for the flight tests and to detect and correct the V2 error during previous G650 flight tests.
Increasingly aggressive attempts by the flight test team to reach V2 speeds that were set too low.
Gulfstream's insufficient investigation of previous incidents during the test campaign (Flight 88 on 16 November 2010 and flight 132 on 14 March 2011), which indicated that the maximum angle of attack of the aircraft estimated by the company was too high in the ground effect.
The tight test program specified by the company had also contributed to the accident on two of the three points: The test pilots tried to achieve the lowest possible V2 in order to achieve the take-off and landing distances already promised in advance and there was no time to get to the bottom of major errors.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Gulfstream Aerospace Flight 153” (revision 1356223160, 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/reports_aviation.html. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-12-02.
On April 2, 2011, about 0934 mountain daylight time, an experimental Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation GVI (G650), N652GD, crashed during takeoff from runway 21 at Roswell International Air Center Airport, Roswell, New Mexico. The two pilots and the two flight test engineers were fatally injured, and the airplane was substantially damaged by impact forces and a postcrash fire. The airplane was registered to and operated by Gulfstream as part of its G650 flight test program. The flight was conducted under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:
an aerodynamic stall and subsequent uncommanded roll during a one engine-inoperative takeoff flight test, which were the result of (1) Gulfstream’s failure to properly develop and validate takeoff speeds for the flight tests and recognize and correct the takeoff safety speed (V2) error during previous G650 flight tests, (2) the G650 flight test team’s persistent and increasingly aggressive attempts to achieve V2 speeds that were erroneously low, and (3) Gulfstream’s inadequate investigation of previous G650 uncommanded roll events, which indicated that the company’s estimated stall angle of attack while the airplane was in ground effect was too high. Contributing to the accident was Gulfstream’s failure to effectively manage the G650 flight test program by pursuing an aggressive program schedule without ensuring that the roles and responsibilities of team members had been appropriately defined and implemented, engineering processes had received sufficient technical planning and oversight, potential hazards had been fully identified, and appropriate risk controls had been implemented and were functioning as intended.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Gulfstream Aerospace Flight 153
- Revision
- 1356223160 · 2026-05-26 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q109781385
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA11MA076
- Event ID
- 20110403X03645
- Case number
- DCA11MA076
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Gulfstream Aerospace Flight 153" (page 79301796, revision 1356223160); merged with NTSB case DCA11MA076 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA11MA076: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA11MA076
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA11MA076: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA11MA076: 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 DCA11MA076: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA11MA076: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA11MA076: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Gulfstream Aerospace Flight 153" and NTSB case DCA11MA076, 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. 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.