East Coast Jets Flight 81
aviation accident
East Coast Jets Flight 81 was a business jet flight operated by East Coast Jets that crashed on July 31, 2008 while attempting a go-around at Owatonna Degner Regional Airport near Owatonna, Minnesota, killing all eight occupants on board. The flight originated in Atlantic City International Airport, and was scheduled to land in Owatonna. The crew made a go-around attempt after the aircraft touched down, but it overran the runway, hit the instrument landing system localizer antenna at an altitude of approximately 5 ft (1.5 m), stalled and crashed, with the main wreckage coming to rest 2,400 ft (730 m) from the runway end.
Aircraft and crew
The aircraft operating the flight was a Hawker 800 registered as N818MV and manufactured in 1991. East Coast Jets began operating it in June 2003.
The captain was 40-year-old Clark Jon Keefer, a former flight instructor who had been with East Coast Jets since 2005. He had 3,600 flight hours including 1,188 hours on the Hawker 800. Keefer also had 874 hours on Learjet aircraft, totaling 2,062 flight hours on turbine-engine aircraft. The first officer was 27-year-old Daniel D'Ambrosio, who had been with East Coast Jets for less than a year and had previously worked for Colgan Air but quit during training due to an unexpected transfer of location. D'Ambrosio had 1,454 flight hours, with 295 of them on the Hawker 800.
“East Coast Jets Flight 81” enters the record as aviation accident. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what East, Coast and Jets can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“East Coast Jets Flight 81” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, East, Coast and Jets provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30643510. Authority coordinates are 44.131, -93.275. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008, 1991, 2003 and 2005.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “East Coast Jets Flight 81”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow East Coast Jets Flight 81 primary sources, East Coast Jets Flight 81 archive and East research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “East Coast Jets Flight 81”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “East Coast Jets Flight 81” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.