Serious incident to the Cessna 510 Citation Mustang registered F-GMTJ on 22/01/2019 at Paris – Le Bourget (Seine Saint Denis)

Cat. 2 investigation report: simplified-format report, adapted to the circumstances of the occurrence and the investigation stakes.

The pilot made an approach to an airport that he knew behind the controls of his own aeroplane. During west-facing approaches, he was used to landing on runway 27, according to the ILS procedure.

Although he prepared the VPT 25 approach beforehand when the INI controller gave him the instruction, the pilot was uncomfortable, only having very rarely made approaches to runway 25, never at night and never according to this procedure. It is possible that the incident that the pilot experienced in 2014 during a VOR 25 approach added stress in preparing for the approach.

Faced with this uncomfortable situation, the pilot did not express his concerns to the controllers with whom he was successively in contact. Had he expressed his concerns, the controllers might have been able to assist him or propose a different approach procedure.

The weather conditions recorded indicated a cloud ceiling at 700 ft from the ground, below the minima fixed at 790 ft by the VPT 25 procedure. When the pilot left the approach path to runway 27 to follow the VPT 25 procedure, he could not yet see the runway. It was not possible to determine if the acquisition of visual references occurred before or after passing through the minimum descent altitude (MDA).

The pilot was aware that the weather conditions could render the runway slippery: when he identified runway 25, he decided to land at the start of the runway as he was used to doing, without identifying the displaced threshold of nearly 900 m.

The concrete section of the runway before the displaced threshold was probably very slippery even if it had been cleared of snow not long before. This may have caused the deviation to the left during the landing and the runway veer-off despite the presence of an antiskid system.