Mesa Airlines Beech 1900D accident
Beech 1900D · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Bangor International Airport (BGR) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97FA045
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N139ZV
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bangor International Airport (BGR)To Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), Boston, MA
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Airport personnel › Airport snow removal, discontinued
- Company/operator management › Inadequate training
- Pilot in command › Abort above v1, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bangor, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff roll, as the FO rotated the airplane, the stall warning horn activated. The airplane lifted from the runway with the stall horn on, and above V1 speed the PIC called out to abort. The FO aborted the takeoff and landed the airplane on the runway. The airplane then entered a snow bank on the left side of the runway. Service Difficulty Reports revealed other stall horn activation's had occurred on takeoff; several occurred after deicing and were attributed to frozen stall vanes on the wing. The accident airplane had been deiced prior to the takeoff. The BE1900 check list called for the stall vane heat to be turned on just before takeoff. Stall training provided by the operator did not include BE1900 simulators, and all recoveries were initiated at the stall horn. The FAA practical test standard for type ratings required the recognition of the stall buffet, stick shaker, or decay of control effectiveness. The flight crew had not received winter operations training, and this was the Boston based PIC's third takeoff in snow. Multiple FAA inspections over several years revealed the Operator was not in compliance with regulations, which included their training program; however, they continued to operate unrestricted. Airport operations had ceased snow plowing the 300 foot wide runway to accommodate airline operations, and reported the runway had been plowed 75 feet west and 150 feet east of runway center. The runway was measured to be plowed 55 feet left of center, with a 1 foot high, and 10 foot wide pile of snow on the west side of the runway. The plowed portion had an icy covering.
Probable cause
The inadequate flight and winter operations training provided by the operator, and the pilot's improper decision to abort the takeoff while airborne above V1, due to a false stall warning horn. Also casual was the airport operations improper decision to discontinue plowing, and their failure to remove a snow pile on the runway. Factors relating to the accident were an easterly crosswind, the narrow icy runway conditions, inadequate FAA oversight in allowing the operator to continue operations with an inadequate training program that continued over several years, and the manufacturer's checklist which delayed the activation of the stall vane heat until just prior to takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97FA045
- Event ID
- 20001208X07345
- Case number
- NYC97FA045
- 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: 371a20bc2c9ae3ca3fce7b2471027e6e0ea53be69c269452c1541994a8c7585f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:43:21.003Z.