American Airlines Flight 2027
Boeing 727-223 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA021
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-223
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N845AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), PATo Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), DALLAS/FT WORTH, 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
- 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
- Driver of vehicle › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had just been pushed back from the gate. As the flight crew were taxiing in a non-movement area, the airplane and a tug collided. The captain felt the impact, but thought the airplane had experienced a blown tire. Neither he nor any of the cockpit crew saw the tug before impact. All witnesses stated that the tug did not brake or swerve prior to the collision. Examination of the damaged tug and its maintenance forms revealed no mechanical problems. No deficiencies were found in the driver's training jacket. After a 2 week vacation, this was the driver's first day back on the job. He was driving the tug since 0430, without any reported mechanical problems. The emergency room doctor stated that there was no symptoms detected of any medical events which could have caused the driver to lose consciousness. The driver recalled that 'while driving the tug, he dropped his water container, and the last thing he could remember was reaching down for it.'
Probable cause
failure of the tug driver to see-and-avoid the taxiing airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA021
- Event ID
- 20001211X09452
- Case number
- IAD98LA021
- 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: 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: 944ea02f7964bfb30dd67d49c44df8d80e3f1d91a40cd6cb9c9738c0865584d2; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:14:58.448Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N845AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.