Express Airlines One Saab-Scania AB (Saab) 340A accident
Saab-Scania AB (Saab) 340A · Accident while standing
From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM) to CVG · CINCINATTI, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA026
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- 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
Saab-Scania AB (Saab) 340A
- Aircraft type
- Saab Scania Ab (saab) 340
- 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
- N325PX
- Operator
- Express Airlines One
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM)To CVG · CINCINATTI, 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
- Standing · engine(s) 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
- Ground personnel › Propeller/jet blast encounter, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The ground crewmember was positioned to the right front of the aircraft and assisted with the start of No. 2 engine. She then signaled for removal of ground power and the flightcrew gave her the signal to remove ground power. She walked directly from her position toward the ground power unit, located behind the right wing, and was struck by the rotating propeller, receiving fatal injuries. Postmortem examination of the ground crewmember showed the cause of death was blunt head injuries and there were no findings that could be considered causal to the accident. Toxicology testing on specimens from the ground crewmember were negative for carbon monoxide, cyanide, ethanol alcohol, and drugs. The tests were positive for salicylate and a detection of brompheniramine in urine. The company station operations manual warns ground crewmembers not to go under the wing of an aircraft if an engine on that wing is running.
Probable cause
The ground crewmembers inadvertent walking into the path of a rotating propeller resulting in her being struck and fatally injured.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA026
- Event ID
- 20001211X11475
- Case number
- MIA99LA026
- 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 1998-11-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bf86c9d83dd07ed000d54828793ac4b7d2286944c00bb723489d0a17f9db802f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:02:58.461Z.