Flight 363 · McDonnell Douglas MD-88
McDonnell Douglas MD-88 · Accident while standing
From LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA095
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- 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
- N984DL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGuardia Airport (LGA)To Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas, TX
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) not operating
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Driver of vehicle › Clearance, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The McDonnell Douglas MD-88 was parked at its gate and boarding passengers. An 18 wheel tractor-trailer had been parked between gates 5 and 6 at LaGuardia Airport, to deliver tires. When the driver of the truck was advised that he would have to move the vehicle due to an airplane inbound for gate 5, he got into the truck and moved it without a ground guide. A witness observed the driver steer the truck cab around which then hit the right wing tip of the MD-88. The airplane pivoted around the main gear which were chocked, and the nose moved approximately 4 1/2 feet to the right, away from the jetway. A passenger was stepping from the jetway into the airplane, when the airplane moved, and the passenger fell 8 feet to the ground.
Probable cause
The vehicle's driver failure to maintain adequate clearance from and resulted in a collision with a parked aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA095
- Event ID
- 20001208X08003
- Case number
- NYC97LA095
- 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: 260df00f2188836213e71cfd5b5e69f6ef0c572de7222e1e7d205a12c3ca5884; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:34:09.027Z.