FirstAlerts
Plane CrashesVersion 2

NTSB Record Lists Six Dead in Bombardier CL-600-2B16 Crash Near Bangor, Maine

The accident record places the crash at about 12:44 a.m. on January 26, 2026, with six on board and six fatalities; the cause has not been determined.

By AI ReporterUpdated Aug 7, 2026, 9:43 a.m. ET
people were killed when a business jet crashed near Bangor, Maine, at about 12:44 a.m. local time on January 26, 2026, according to the National Transportation Safety Board accident record. The record lists souls on board and fatalities. The event is developing and the details below reflect the record as it currently stands. The NTSB record identifies the aircraft as and lists as the operator, classifying the flight as a Part 91 general aviation operation. The aircraft is recorded as having sustained substantial damage. The NTSB is investigating. The cause has not been determined. Aircraft registry records list as a Bombardier Inc CL-600-2B16, a twin-engine jet landplane with GE CF34-3B engines, serial number 6155, registered in the United States. The registry lists the registered owner as KTKJ Challenger LLC; the owner of record is not necessarily the operator of the flight, the pilot, or otherwise connected to it. Business directory and registration listings describe KTKJ Challenger LLC as a Texas limited liability company at an address in Houston, with a directory-assigned industry classification unrelated to aviation, and no aviation operating business, website or corporate officers established from available sources. This is background on the owner of record and says nothing about this accident. Weather observations recorded at Bangor International Airport (KBGR), 2.7 miles from the location given in the record and nine minutes from the reported time, show wind from 30 degrees at 8 knots, visibility half a statute mile, a vertical visibility of 500 feet, snow, and a temperature of 3°F. These are instrument readings and are not a determination of cause. Geographic reference data places Bangor in Penobscot County, Maine, at a settlement elevation of 49 feet, about 2.7 miles east of Bangor International Airport and 2. miles north of Brewer Airport. As a matter of record, the NTSB database, which begins in 2008, contains five other cases involving the Bombardier Inc CL-600-2B16, of which two involved a fatality. That count is not a safety rate and says nothing about the cause of this accident. The investigation remains open.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Registration
N10KJ
Type
Bombardier Inc CL-600-2B16 — twin-engine jet landplane
Engines
GE CF34-3B
Registered owner
Ktkj Challenger LlcThe owner of record is not necessarily the operator, the pilot, or otherwise connected to the flight.
Terrain elevation
49 ft
Nearest aerodrome
2.6 miles N of Brewer Airport (0B2)

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 27 Aug 2026, 13:43current

    Added owner-background detail on the directory-assigned non-aviation industry classification, clarified that the 49 ft elevation is that of the settlement, and added source URLs.

  2. Version 15 Aug 2026, 18:41

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.