SkyWest Airlines Flight 5967
Canadair CL600 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during pushback
From Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR) to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA357
- 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
Canadair CL600
- Aircraft type
- Canadair CL600
- 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
- N403SW
- Operator
- SkyWest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR)To Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UT
- 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
- Pushback/towing
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Ground personnel › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE GROUND CREW WERE NOT USING HEADSETS WHILE PUSHING BACK THE AIRPLANE. THE GROUND CREW DID NOT FOLLOW COMPANY PROCEDURES AND DISCONNECTED THE TOW BAR WITHOUT RECEIVING AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT FROM THE FLIGHT CREW. THE GROUND CREW DID UTILIZE HAND SIGNAL PROCEDURES TWICE, BUT WERE UNABLE TO SEE THE CAPTAIN'S RESPONSE DUE TO THE POOR LIGHTING CONDITIONS. THE FLIGHT CREW WAS STARTING THE ENGINES AND DID NOT SEE NOR ACKNOWLEDGE THE PARKING BRAKE SIGNAL. THEY WERE NOT AWARE THAT THE GROUND CREW DISCONNECTED THE TOW BAR. MOMENTS LATER, THE JET ROLLED FORWARD AND STRUCK THE TUG.
Probable cause
the ground crew's failure to follow company procedures. The failure of the operator to provide headsets to communicate with the flightcrew and the poor lighting conditions were factors in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA357
- Event ID
- 20001206X02285
- Case number
- LAX94LA357
- 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. 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: eb24b529cb393573170eccb6066f4a5116cf4ac7d1ff111eb6c3e5fcb6321a04; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:08:27.595Z.