American Trans Air Flight 751
Boeing 727-200 · Accident while standing
From LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA235
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-200
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N785AT
- Operator
- American Trans Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGuardia Airport (LGA)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Door, cargo/baggage › Out of balance
- Other person › Maintenance, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The ground handler attempted to close the cargo door of the parked Boeing 727, in preparation for its departure. She released the support strut, the door fell down, and the strut penetrated her hand. About 3 weeks prior to the accident, the cargo door was reported as 'heavy to open.' Corrective action consisted of re-securing the forward counterbalance hinge. About a month after the accident, the cargo door was reported as, 'heavy when opening.' Corrective action at that time was: 'Adjusted cable tension on fwd balance.'
Probable cause
Inadequate counterbalancing to compensate for the weight of the cargo door.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA235
- Event ID
- 20001204X00109
- Case number
- NYC99LA235
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8b1707234b851655a1e633706e3a2d0cb4f016d0435998d47f55fafc638b62ed; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:00:43.293Z.