Alaska Airlines Flight 196
McDonnell Douglas MD-80 · Incident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97IA011
- 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
- Incident
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-80
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-80
- 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
- N954AS
- Operator
- Alaska Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)To Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WA
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Ground personnel › Communications, not maintained
- Ground personnel › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was pushed back from the gate, the tug was disconnected, and the engines were started. The push back tug drove away to the gate. Another tug towing a baggage cart with 3 pieces of late cargo drove up to the mid cargo compartment on the right side of the airplane. The baggage tug driver and the right side wing walker began to load the cargo in the mid section cargo compartment. One piece of cargo would not fit. They began to carry the cargo to the forward cargo compartment. The left side wing walker, who had been standing in front of the airplane and was considered to be the marshaller, walked to the forward cargo bin and opened the door and began to assist in the loading. The airplane began taxiing and the right wing struck the tug which had parked in front of the right wing. The ground mashaller did not give a wave off to the flight crew, nor did he alert the flight crew that additional cargo was to be loaded as required by the flight operations manual and the customer services manual. The flight crew did not receive nor did they give a salute to anyone. They did not use their nose wheel taxi light to signal anyone as stated in their flight operations manual.
Probable cause
The ground crew's failure to maintain communication with the flight crew while loading cargo after pushback and engine start, and the ground and flightcrew's failure to follow the procedure outlined in their manuals concerning use of marshallers during pushback and waveoff signals by the groundcrew and flightcrew.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97IA011
- Event ID
- 20001208X07122
- Case number
- ANC97IA011
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-12-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 89cdc152594e83710cca437cb3235b5c10249ff1cba664366506d1723cfb2bfc; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:44:38.967Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N954AS; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ASAA.