A Cessna 560XL Citation Excel was chartered to fly 8 passengers from Oroville Airport (California USA) to Portland International Airport (Oregon, USA) on this day in 2019. The flight preparation and preflight inspection were completed without problems after which the passengers boarded the aircraft.
Picture taken from a youtube movie made shortly after the aircraft came to a stop. (Source; Youtube.com © SkyWay Aviation)
With the passengers onboard the crew completed the necessary checklists and taxied out towards runway 2 after starting the engines. During the taxi to the runway, most items on the taxi checklist were completed. The co-pilot then called ATC on his mobile phone to obtain the IFR clearance, for the flight to Portland. On reaching the runway the aircraft was stopped and the captain applied the parking brake as part of the rudder bias check. The fact that the parking brake was set was not communicated to the co-pilot. After the copilot received the IFR clearance the Flight Management system was updated. Just before initiating take-off, the crew discusses a "NO TAKEOFF" light that had come on due to a wrong trim setting and an engaged autopilot. The autopilot was disconnected and the trim setting was corrected. They also discussed how a tablet that had shifted could engage the auto-pilot.
Firefighters attending to the scene of the accident (© Oroville CHP)
The throttles were set for take-off, about 2 seconds after the copilot confirmed take-off power was set, he said that the airplane was barely moving and then stated that something was not right. About 3 seconds later, the pilot stated the airplane was rolling and told the copilot to call speeds, which the copilot acknowledged. About 16 seconds later, the pilot indicated that the airplane was using more runway than he expected. The copilot called out the takeoff-decision speed 2 seconds later and said “rotate” for rotation speed 1 second after that. When the captain initiated rotation the nosewheel would not lift off, even an additional pull back on the yoke would not lift the nosewheel from the runway. As the aircraft would not lift off, take off was aborted by selecting full reverse thrust and applying maximum braking. There was not enough runway remaining to stop the aircraft, and the aircraft left the paved surface of the runway.
The aircraft came to rest 1,990 ft beyond the departure end of the runway. The airplane was destroyed by a postcrash fire, and the crew and passengers were not injured.
Overview of the accident site (© NTSB)
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the runway overrun and concluded that the probable cause was;
The pilot’s failure to release the parking brake before attempting to initiate the takeoff produced an unexpected retarding force and airplane nose down pitching moment. Also causal was the flight crew’s delayed decision to abort the takeoff, which resulted in a runway excursion. Contributing to the accident was the lack of a NO TAKEOFF annunciation warning that the parking brake was engaged, and the lack of a checklist item to ensure the parking brake was fully released immediately before takeoff.
The full NTSB report, on which this blog is based is available for the readers' reference by clicking on the .pdf file below;
Video taken shortly after the aircraft came to a stop. (Source; Youtube.com © SkyWay Aviation)