Cause & Circumstance

Richard N. Aarons

This is one of those accidents that doesn’t require a great deal of analysis to uncover causal factors, but it should generate some serious introspection for those of us who have found ourselves, from time to time, rushing to get into the air. (And who hasn’t?)

The NTSB investigators who probed the Feb. 1, 2008, loss of a Cessna 525 CitationJet into a West Gardiner, Maine, woodlot, developed the factual information presented here. The 45-year-old owner pilot and her 10-year-old son were killed when their airplane crashed shortly after departure from the Augusta State Airport (AUG) on a personal, FAR Part 91 IFR flight to Lincoln Airport (LNK) in Nebraska. The accident occurred about 1748 EST in IMC.

Weather in the Augusta area had been miserable most of the day. The surface observation at AUG minutes after the accident aircraft departed included: winds from 20 degrees at three knots; visibility three sm; freezing rain; haze; overcast clouds at 1,800 feet; temperature -6°C; dew point temperature -6°C; and altimeter 30.32.

Employees of the Augusta FBO told investigators that they had fueled the aircraft and moved it from the ramp into an unoccupied hangar earlier that morning at the pilot’s request. The hangar is used by an air carrier based at the airport and was empty until the air carrier’s 1630 flight was cancelled due to poor weather conditions.

So, about 1600, the Cessna was taken out of the hangar and moved back to the icy ramp area to allow the air carrier’s airplane to be moved inside out of the elements.

At 1701, a person identifying herself as the pilot of the Cessna (N102PT) called AFSS to file an IFR flight plan from AUG to LNK. (Friends said her plan was to overnight in Lincoln and then fly on to her Colorado home the next morning.) The pilot received a standard weather briefing for the flight advising her of icing, fog, mist, precipitation and turbulence from the surface to the requested flight level of 38,000 feet, along the entire route of flight. A SIGMET for occasional severe mixed/clear icing in clouds and precipitation was in effect for the Augusta area. The pilot commented that the weather was “just cruddy.”

Witnesses stated that the pilot arrived at the airport at about 1715. She and her son loaded their personal effects into the airplane, returned a rental car and paid for the fuel. The pilot and passenger boarded the airplane, after declining an offer by an FBO representative to deice the aircraft. (Over the previous hour and a half, the weather conditions had turned from light snow to freezing rain, and ice was observed covering the cars in the parking lot. The ice was about a quarter-inch thick.)

At 1731, the pilot of N102PT contacted the Portland International Jetport (PWM) ATC tower for her IFR clearance. The controller provided a full route clearance and the pilot read it back correctly. The pilot advised that they would be departing from Runway 17 in about five minutes.

At 1736, the pilot, using the clearance delivery frequency, advised of the engines start and that they were taxiing out Runway 17, and then stated, correction, taxiing for Runway 35.

An FBO employee heard the pilot’s radio transmissions over a radio in the FBO office and watched as the airplane moved away from the ramp. The employee said later that the airplane was not moving on the taxiway, but rather on the grass area on the south side of the asphalt taxiway. At that time the ground was covered with snow and ice.