Delta Airlines Flight 190
Boeing 727-2Q8 · Incident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water while taxiing
From an unrecorded airport to CVG · Cincinnati, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98IA261
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Boeing 727-2Q8
- 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
- N831L
- Operator
- Delta Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo CVG · Cincinnati, OH
- 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 terrain/water
- 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
- Airport facilities, taxiway marking › Not installed
- Airport personnel › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not identified
- Pilot in command › Wrong taxi route, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Las Vegas, NV, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The flight had just pushed back from a new terminal at the airport. The crew had checked the NOTAMS for the flight and discussed one, which cautioned pilots to be aware of a ditch that was not easily visible nor marked, which was located directly across from the new terminal. The crew discussed the ditch during preflight and also on their earlier arrival into the airport; however, the crew did not see the ditch. The crew taxied across the ramp to a hold point and called ground control for a taxi clearance. Initial taxi clearance had the airplane turning right on the closest parallel taxiway. Due to weight considerations, the crew requested a runway change. Ground control then had the airplane turn right on the outboard parallel taxiway. The captain said he looked down at the taxiway diagram and confused his position with taxiway C4 rather than Spot 4. The captain then taxied the airplane forward across taxiway C, through the ditch, and made a right turn onto taxiway Bravo. After encountering the ditch, the crew came to a consensus that there was nothing unusual about the airplane to preclude continuing the flight. The flight attendants did not convey to the flight crew the extent of motion in the back of the airplane, nor did the flight crew ask the flight attendants about their ride in the back of the airplane. The flight to their intended destination was uneventful. The oncoming crew discovered the minor damage to the airplane. At the time of the incident, the infield area was not lit or marked to help illuminate the ditch, and the ditch had no boundary hazard markings. One month prior to this event, another air carrier had one of their airplanes taxi through the same area. After the two incidents, airport operations ordered and placed plastic reflective delineators around the ditch area.
Probable cause
The airport personnel's failure to properly mark the ditch hazard and the taxiway boundaries surrounding it, and, the captain's failure to maintain a situational awareness of his location with respect to the taxiway layout. The dark night lighting condition was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98IA261
- Event ID
- 20001211X10889
- Case number
- LAX98IA261
- 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: eb41a9341e75904409dda6a297fd9d22e9a5ecde15020c13542d2565d01af5cd; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:06:06.983Z.