“Aircraft upside down. We have a passenger aircraft upside down.” The words come over an air traffic control recording, about 45 seconds after a business jet is cleared to leave Runway 33 at Bangor International Airport in Maine. It is Sunday evening, January 25, 2026, around 7:45 p.m., and snow has only just begun to fall as a huge winter storm moves in.
Nobody on the jet walks away. The Bombardier Challenger flips, burns and comes to rest inverted in a grassy safety area beside the runway. Airport director Jose Saavedra said first responders reached the wreck in less than a minute.
The count that kept changing
The early numbers were wrong. The Federal Aviation Administration first said seven people died and one crew member survived, then warned that those figures were preliminary. By Monday afternoon the airport, working from the flight manifest, said six people were aboard and all of them were dead. The National Transportation Safety Board later confirmed it: two pilots and four passengers. No one went to a hospital.
The jet, tail number N10KJ, had flown in from Houston and landed at 6:09 p.m., the Associated Press reported, on the first leg of a trip to Châlons-Vatry Airport in France. Bangor is one of the closest U.S. airports to Europe and often serves as a fuel stop for private jets crossing the Atlantic. It sits roughly 200 miles north of Boston. The aircraft was registered to a corporation sharing a Houston address with the law firm Arnold and Itkin.
Nine minutes, then sixteen
The NTSB’s preliminary report, as summarized by AeroTime, puts the focus on a stopwatch. Crews finished spraying the jet with Type IV anti-ice fluid at 1930:55. The weather that night was light snow, 3/4 statute mile visibility and minus 16 degrees Celsius, which under FAA guidelines gave a maximum holdover time of nine minutes. That clock starts when the fluid goes on.
The jet rolled off the deice pad with about 8 minutes 3 seconds used up, then stopped roughly 200 feet short of the Runway 33 hold line. It did not start its takeoff roll until 1943:57. By then, roughly 16 minutes 14 seconds had passed.
The cockpit voice recorder caught the pilots discussing it on the taxiway. The pilot said it was “standard” to have 14-18 minutes, and that after more than 30 minutes the crew would go back and deice again. The copilot agreed. The report does not explain where that figure came from.
Seconds in the air
The copilot called V1 at 1944:18, though the jet had not reached that speed. It lifted off at 1944:24. Two seconds later both stick shakers fired. The jet rolled left, then right. At 1944:30, just before the recorder stopped, it sat about 77 degrees right wing down.
Investigators found no sign of a flight control failure, and both engines kept producing takeoff power. The debris field ran approximately 1,270 feet long and 150 feet wide, according to AirPro News.
Aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, had flagged the risk on day one. This model, he said, “has a history of problems with icing on takeoff.” The NTSB’s final report is expected in 12 to 24 months.
Sources
- At least 6 killed in Maine jet crash (AP, via Boston.com)
- NTSB focuses on deicing timeline in fatal Bangor Challenger crash (AeroTime, Stephen Pope)
- NTSB Preliminary Report: No Mechanical Failure Found in Bangor Challenger 600 Crash (AirPro News)
