Canadair CL-600 accident near Mojave
Canadair CL600 · The accident of a Canadair CL-600 of Canadair near Mojave occurred on 3 April 1980
From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV) to Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV)
Event
- 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
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- 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
- 1
- 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
Canadair CL600
- Aircraft type
- Canadair CL600
- 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
- C-GCGR-X
- Operator
- Canadair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV)To Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV)
- 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 (aircraft manufacturer)
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Uncontrolled collision with ground/water
- 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
- Instruments/equipment and accessories › Angle of attack indicator
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Binding
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Deteriorated
- Systems › Other
- Systems › Seals
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mojave, CA, near the place the Wikipedia article names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
The accident of a Canadair CL-600 of Canadair near Mojave occurred on 3 April 1980. A Canadair CL-600-1A11 Challenger 600 crashed to the ground during a Canadair test flight after a loss of control with a deep stall, with neither the anti-spin parachute nor the rescue parachute of one of the pilots functioning properly. One crew member died as a result of the events.
Accident sequence
On the morning of 3 April 1980, a test flight was begun with the aircraft from Mojave Airport in California. As part of the routine test flight, the aircraft's flight behaviour during stalls in various configurations was to be evaluated. Identical test flights had already been flown with the aircraft numerous times before. On that day the crew intended to investigate more closely a noise that had occurred during earlier stalls.
During a stall at a flight altitude of 17,000 feet, the aircraft's angle of attack increased beyond the permissible maximum value of 34 degrees. A deep stall then occurred. As a last attempt to regain control of the aircraft, the pilots activated the anti-spin parachute, which deployed but did not open properly. Gollings and Scott then jumped from the aircraft with their parachutes through the rear door. Ronaasen jumped out of the side door, but his parachute failed, so that he died on impact with the ground. The aircraft crashed to the ground at 09:10 near the village of Cantil and burned out after the impact.
Accident investigation
The accident investigation was conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board. The investigators found four technical failures that had occurred independently of one another, three of which had already occurred on the aircraft concerned before. One of these defects, a failure of the left engine, had occurred eleven times in the preceding seven months. A problem with the angle-of-attack indication, which had been caused by a fault in the seals of the hydraulic system, was given as the probable main cause of the accident.
In 1980 the CL-600 design was certified for flight by both Transport Canada and the Federal Aviation Administration, with both including some restrictions for pilots, including a limited maximum takeoff weight. Subsequently, an extensive programme to reduce the weight of the aircraft was carried out in order to improve the aircraft's range.
Months after the accident, a flight engineer analysed computer data from CL-600 aircraft and came to the conclusion that the noise that was to be examined during the stall tests had been caused by an engine problem.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Flugunfall einer Canadair CL-600 von Canadair bei Mojave” (revision 237194312, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB remarks
BNG PNS5632RHH5P28102.UNKN FAILURE IN EMERGENCY CHUTE JETTISON SYSTEM.AC SEAT FOR CREW ONLY.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Flugunfall einer Canadair CL-600 von Canadair bei Mojave
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 237194312 · 2023-09-10 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q98609829
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19800403P083146
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Flugunfall einer Canadair CL-600 von Canadair bei Mojave" (page 11407454, revision 237194312), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NTSB19800403P083146 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19800403P083146: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19800403P083146
- Map position
- Wikipedia: centre of the town the Wikipedia infobox site names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19800403P083146: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19800403P083146: operated under Part 91: General aviation (aircraft manufacturer)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19800403P083146: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19800403P083146: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Canadair CL-600 accident near Mojave" and NTSB case NTSB19800403P083146, 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.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Unreviewed: it failed the site's consistency check (see the summary). Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.