International Boundary and Water Commission Cessna 421 crash
Cila Cessna 421 Golden Eagle · Weather conditions
From El Paso International Airport (ELP) to Presidio Lely International Airport, Presidio, Texas
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08RA232
- 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 · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 4 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- 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
- 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
- Government
- 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
Cessna 421 Golden Eagle
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 421
- 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
- N7560Q
- Operator
- Cila
- Onboard fatalities
- 4
- Route
- From El Paso International Airport (ELP)To Presidio Lely International Airport, Presidio, Texas
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
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
The International Boundary and Water Commission Cessna 421 air accident occurred on 15 September 2008; the aircraft, a Cessna 421, took off at 10:00 a.m. Central Time from El Paso International Airport, Texas, towards Presidio, Texas, on a flight to inspect the levees of the Rio Grande on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico. On 16 September, the SRE confirmed the search for the aircraft, without results. The governor of Chihuahua, José Reyes Baeza Terrazas, confirmed on 16 September the crash of a light aircraft at a point between El Paso and Presidio, Texas. On 17 September the wreckage of the aircraft was located in the municipality of Ojinaga, although the Mexican foreign ministry stated that the search for the aircraft and its crew was continuing. The light aircraft was located in the Sierra Barrancos de Guadalupe, about 20 km inside Mexican territory, near the locality of San Antonio de Bravo, Chihuahua, confirming the deaths of the commissioners of Mexico: José Arturo Herrera Solís, and of the United States: Carlos Marín and Jake Brisbin, as well as of the pilot Matthew Peter Juneau. The Senate of Mexico held a minute of silence in memory of the Mexican commissioner, who had held his post since 1989. On 19 September, at 14:00 Mountain Time, the bodies of the CILA international officials arrived in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; they had been recovered by personnel of SEDENA, the PGR, the Government of the State of Chihuahua and the municipal authorities of Ojinaga.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Spanish Wikipedia article “Accidente aéreo del Cessna 421 de la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas” (revision 174559310, 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 narrative
On September 15, 2008, approximately 1318 central daylight time, a United States registered Cessna 421B, N7560Q, was substantially damaged after it collided with mountainous terrain approximately 28 miles northwest of Ojinaga, Mexico, near the border town of Presidio, Texas. The air transport rated pilot and the three passengers were fatally injured. The airplane was registered to EAC Parts LLC, Springfield, Ohio, and operated by Volare Air Charter, El Paso, Texas. The pilot contacted the Fort Worth Automated Flight Service Station (AFSS), Fort Worth, Texas, at 1016, approximately 15 minutes after he departed El Paso International Airport, El Paso, Texas, and filed a visual flight rules flight plan to Presidio, Texas. The pilot informed an AFSS specialist that he intended to enter Mexican airspace for the purpose of flying over the Luis Leon Dam, but had no intentions of landing in Mexico. The pilot did not request a weather briefing for the flight conducted under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135; however, he was informed by the specialist that visual flight rules were not recommended due to mountain obscuration.
Onboard the airplane were the pilot, the United States and Mexican Commissioners of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), and the Executive Director for the Rio Grande Council of Governments. The purpose of the flight was to assess Rio Grande flood conditions at Presidio-Ojinaga and to coordinate joint US-Mexican efforts with local officials to address flood control concerns in the area due to heavy inflows to the Rio Grande from reservoirs inside Mexico as a result of recent storms.
The airplane wreckage was located on September 17, 2008, by the Marfa Sector of the US Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Division, on the west side of the Sierra Grande Mountains, at an approximate elevation of 6,500 feet mean sea level (msl). The airplane came to rest approximately 100-150 feet below the top of a ridgeline on a heading of 055 degrees along victor-airway V81.
A handheld Garmin 496 GPS was removed from the airplane wreckage and sent to the NTSB's Research and Engineering Laboratory, Washington DC, for further examination and download.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction and control of the Government of the Republic of Mexico. Any further information may be obtained from:
Dirección de Investigación de Incidentes y Accidentes Aviacion Direccion General de Aeronautica Civil (DGAC) Ave. 602 NUM. 161. COL. San Juan de Aragon 3RA Seccion C.P. 15620 Delagacion Benustiano Carranza México, D. F.
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by, or obtained from the DGAC of the Republic of Mexico.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Spanish Wikipedia article: Accidente aéreo del Cessna 421 de la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 174559310 · 2026-07-26 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q5656113
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DFW08RA232
- Event ID
- 20080925X01526
- Case number
- DFW08RA232
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- es Wikipedia article "Accidente aéreo del Cessna 421 de la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas" (page 1906194, revision 174559310), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DFW08RA232 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17)
- Map position
- NTSB record DFW08RA232: NTSB API eventLatitude/eventLongitude
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DFW08RA232
- Operation
- Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): An inspection flight of the International Boundary and Water Commission carrying the Mexican and United States commissioners: official work of a state body. The article: "on a flight to inspect the levees of the Rio Grande on both sides of the border between the United States and Mexico"
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "International Boundary and Water Commission Cessna 421 crash" and NTSB case DFW08RA232, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia'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: coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.