Unusual Crash: Gulfstream G200 in Honduras

Reports are that the jet went off Runway 02 and departed control and slid down a bank, breaking in two in the process.

Runway excursions, when a landing aircraft departs the runway either when taking off or landing, are not rare events, unfortunately. We all know people who have taken out a runway light or two. But when it comes to jets, excursions, or departures as they're sometimes called, from the runway are often fatal events.

Tegucigalpa is a challenging airport. Over the years there have been a number of accidents there, including most infamously the crash of a TAN Boeing 727 in 1989 that killed 146 passengers and crew when the tri-jet hit a mountain on descent into the narrow bowl in which the airport is situated. And though Tegucigalpa, which sis at 3,294 feet above sea level, it isn't a particularly high airport by Latin America standards, its single runway is just over 6,000 feet long, which provides some margin for error for a super-midsized jet like the G200, but not much.

Inexplicably an aviation commentator described as an expert in a story on BBC News' website seemed to suggest that mental fatigue or a design that tended toward a rear center of gravity might have been at play in the accident. It was a strange place to go. The damage to the airplane almost certainly resulted from it departing the runway and going down a sizable embankment.

There have been three G200s involved in runway excursions this year alone. Along with last week's crash, a G200 ran off the runway in Lagos, Nigeria, in January, and earlier this month a G200 on a training flight went off the runway at Yangzhou Taizhou Airport in China.

The remarkable thing about all of these accidents is that there were no fatalities in any of them.