America West Airlines Flight 491
Boeing 757-2S7 · Incident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97IA112
- 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
Boeing 757-2S7
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N902AW
- Operator
- America West Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo Denver International Airport (DEN)
- 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 · from 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane landed on runway 07, and the crew was instructed to contact ramp control. Ramp control, manned by airport personnel (not ATC personnel) instructed the crew to taxi east on taxiway AS to gate A44. The airplane was taxied underneath a pedestrian bridge/overpass (bridge). The airplane's vertical stabilizer struck the bridge. According to the company's procedures/directives, aircraft larger than the Airbus A320 were not to be taxied beneath the bridge, and the crew had been so advised via dispatch papers. In addition, a cautionary note in the airport taxi chart advised that the bridge provided for 40 foot tail and 117 foot wing clearance.
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's failure to comply with company procedures/directives to not taxi the aircraft beneath the bridge/overpass, and his misjudgment of clearance between the vertical stabilizer and the bridge/overpass.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97IA112
- Event ID
- 20001208X07522
- Case number
- FTW97IA112
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-03-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d12a54ca1c1e4376cb4489562e8915a0f3e8f09cf946ac7ad6bad180c15a443e; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:41:37.385Z.