Prime Air Flight 1341
Airbus Industrie A-320-231 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Denver International Airport (DEN) to Cancún International Airport (CUN)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA351
- 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
Airbus Industrie A-320-231
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-320
- 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
- N302ML
- Operator
- Prime Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (DEN)To Cancún International Airport (CUN), Cancun
- 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
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Instructions, written/verbal, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was pushed back from the gate and the crew set the parking brake. They notified the ground crew that they were cleared to disconnect the tug from the aircraft. The flight crew received a clearance by Ramp Control and began to taxi. The nose wheel of the aircraft then ran over one of the ground crewman's legs. According to the injured crewman, the tow bar connection to the aircraft was jammed. He disconnected the tow bar from the tug, and went to release the tow bar from the airplane's nose. He noticed the aircraft start to move, then roll over his legs. According to him, at no time following his braking instructions to the flight crew did he give them a clearance signal to initiate taxi. According to cockpit voice transcripts, a crew member replied, 'I apologize, I thought we were clear' after being told of the accident. The tow bar was still attached to the aircraft and the tug was still directly in front of the aircraft immediately following the accident. Neither the airline nor the ramp contractor's pushback procedures provide instructions for communications should there be a problem with the tow bar disconnect process. This was a contract operation with a weekly frequency.
Probable cause
The failure of the flight crew to comply with braking instructions after being instructed by ground personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA351
- Event ID
- 20001211X10847
- Case number
- FTW98LA351
- 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, damage. 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: 79b014bc7b26ce5ba909e953110587886dacba5182fdd332d366c2f7977c34b6; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:06:03.420Z.