NYC97FA062 · Grumman American G-1159
Pab Aviation Grumman American G-1159 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) to LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97FA062
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Grumman American G-1159
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American G-1159
- 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
- N117FJ
- Operator
- Pab Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE), Allentown, PATo LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Atc personnel(lcl/gnd/clnc) › Control tower service, inadequate
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
All positions at LaGuardia Tower were combined to the local control position from 0011 EST until after the accident. At about 0430 EST, ground personnel (gnd psnl) in 'Vehicle 1277' (communicating on ground control (GC) freq), were cleared on runway (rwy) 13/31 to perform 'lighting maintenance.' Later, during repair of centerline lights & while N117FJ was inbound to the airport, Vehicle 1277 stalled on rwy 13/31. Psnl of Vehicle 1277 attempted to restart the vehicle, but were unable, so they shut off all vehicle lights to reduce electrical load, & again attempted to restart the vehicle, but to no avail. At 0507 (during darkness), N117FJ made initial call to the tower for landing. The controller (ctlr) acknowledged the call, scanned rwy 13/31, did not see Vehicle 1277, & cleared N117FJ to land on rwy 31. At 0510, psnl of Vehicle 1277 observed N117FJ in the approach/landing phase & radioed GC that they were stuck on the rwy. The ctlr then radioed, 'go-around, aircraft on the runway go-around, aircraft on the runway go-around, seven fox juliet go-around.' Moments later, N117FJ impacted Vehicle 1277. The FAA ATC Handbook stated, 'Ensure that the runway to be used is clear of all known ground vehicles, equipment, and personnel before a departing aircraft starts takeoff or a landing aircraft crosses the runway threshold.'
Probable cause
the tower controller's inadequate service by clearing the airplane to land on the same runway, where he had previously cleared a maintenance vehicle to perform maintenance to the runway centerline lights. Factors related to the accident were: darkness, partial failure of the runway centerline lights, the electric maintenance vehicle's loss of engine power, and a failure to have adequate emergency back up lighting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97FA062
- Event ID
- 20001208X07613
- Case number
- NYC97FA062
- 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: 16afd6514bd94cd0d0d898bb1e461109466b52e0d872b0d89da63e24be9e2dec; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:09:13.331Z.