Austin Express Flight 215
Fairchild SA227-AC · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) to Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA149
- 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
Fairchild SA227-AC
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild SA227
- 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
- N730C
- Operator
- Austin Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TXTo Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Driver of vehicle › Miscellaneous, not performed
- Driver of vehicle › Parking brakes, not set
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At night, while taxiing to parking after landing, an unmanned runaway golf cart being used as a lead-in vehicle, collided with the airplane. Witnesses observed the golf cart's driver get out of the cart and the cart continue moving. The driver attempted to stop the cart; however, she was unsuccessful. The cart circled an aircraft 2 or 3 times then veered off and ricocheted off a fence. The pilots reported that they were approximately 50 feet from their intended stopping point, when they observed a golf cart that appeared to be paralleling the fence. At that time they did not perceive it as a hazard. The golf cart then made an 'immediate' change of direction and headed towards their aircraft. After the cart made the change of direction, the pilots observed that the cart was unmanned. They immediately initiated emergency shutdown procedures; however, the cart collided with the left engine's propeller before it could be shutdown.
Probable cause
The failure of the golf cart's driver to shutdown the engine and set the parking brake before exiting, which resulted in an unmanned runaway cart.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA149
- Event ID
- 20001211X09672
- Case number
- FTW98LA149
- 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 1998-03-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 16f2796c77aab075d1d3e67776d6b32a756cf4e0f96d41eb4baba65456ca93da; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:11:51.260Z.