Accident Summary
On October 14, 2004, at approximately 2215 central daylight time, Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701, operating as Northwest Airlink, crashed into a residential area about 2.5 miles south of Jefferson City Memorial Airport in Jefferson City, Missouri. The aircraft was a Bombardier CL-600-2B19, registered as N8396A. The flight was a repositioning trip from Little Rock National Airport, Arkansas, to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Minnesota.
Flight Sequence
During the flight, both engines flamed out following a pilot-induced aerodynamic stall. The crew attempted to restart the engines but were unsuccessful. The captain and first officer were killed in the crash, and the airplane was destroyed. No injuries were reported on the ground.
Probable Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable causes of the accident were: 1) the pilots' unprofessional behavior, deviation from standard operating procedures, and poor airmanship, which resulted in an in-flight emergency from which they were unable to recover, in part because of the pilots' inadequate training; 2) the pilots' failure to prepare for an emergency landing in a timely manner, including communicating with air traffic controllers immediately after the emergency about the loss of both engines and the availability of landing sites; and 3) the pilots' failure to achieve and maintain the target airspeed in the double engine failure checklist, which caused the engine cores to stop rotating and resulted in the core lock engine condition. Contributing to the accident were: 1) the engine core lock condition, which prevented at least one engine from being restarted, and 2) the airplane flight manuals that did not communicate to pilots the importance of maintaining a minimum airspeed to keep the engine cores rotating.