Colorado Aviation Accidents & Incidents

The Safety Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/publictn.htm. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-07/02.

On February 16, 2005, about 0913 mountain standard time, a Cessna Citation 560, N500AT, operated by Martinair, Inc., for Circuit City Stores, Inc., crashed about 4 nautical miles east of Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, Colorado, while on an instrument landing system (ILS) approach to runway 26R. The two pilots and six passengers on board were killed, and the airplane was destroyed by impact forces and postcrash fire. The flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 on an instrument flight rules flight plan. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.

The accident flight and another Circuit City Stores Cessna 560 (N500FK, referred to in this report as the "sister ship") were scheduled to transport Circuit City Stores employees from Richmond International Airport, Richmond, Virginia, to John Wayne Airport, Santa Ana, California, with scheduled fuel stops at Columbia Regional Airport (COU), Columbia, Missouri, and PUB. The accident flight departed Richmond about 0600 eastern standard time. The flight arrived at COU about 0736 central standard time and departed for PUB about 30 minutes later.

At 0847:48, while descending through about flight level 370, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center instructing the flight crew to descend to and maintain 13,000 feet. About 0851, the CVR recorded the flight crew start discussing the icing conditions. Specifically, at 0850:40, the captain stated, "I'm gonna heat 'em up." About 4 minutes later, the captain stated that he turned the windshield heat on, and he then asked the first officer to let him know if he saw any ice on the wing. The first officer replied that he saw ice "building a little bit right on the [wing] leading edge…it's not the real white ice like we had yesterday. It's more of a grayish." The first officer then stated, "there's a real thin line back there." About 2 minutes later, the captain stated that it did not look like the airplane had accumulated any more ice.

At 0858:20, as the airplane was descending through about 18,000 feet, the first officer suggested that the captain cycle the deice boots. After cycling the deice boots, the captain stated, "might've gotten rid of a little but not much." At 0859:29, the first officer stated that the Vref was 96 knots. About 3 1/2 minutes later, the captain told the first officer to "leave the heats on," and the first officer replied, "okay. Got everything nice and warmed up."

At 0905:50, the first officer contacted PUB approach control and stated, "Pueblo approach…thirteen thousand with [automatic terminal information service] Juliet." The PUB local controller instructed the flight crew to fly heading 240° for the ILS runway 26R final approach course and to descend to and maintain 7