Delta Airlines Flight 1889
McDonnell Douglas MD-88 · Accident while standing
From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) to Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA022
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- 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
- N919DL
- Operator
- Delta Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), Grand Rapids, MITo Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)
- 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
- 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 › Equipment, other, uncontrolled
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was chalked at terminal gate with ground power applied. The ground crew then initiated the 'off loading' process. A ground crewmember who was operating a belt loader approached the airplane and as the belt loader approached the 'C1' door, it began to slow down. The belt loader then accelerated forward, struck the airplane and pinned the driver between the seat back of the belt loader and the airplane's fuselage. The driver of the belt load stated his foot slipped off the brake and onto the accelerator. Examination of the belt loader did not revealed any mechanical malfunctions. Light rain was falling at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The driver's failure to maintain control of the belt loader. A factor in the accident was the precipitation which may have contributed to the driver's foot slipping off the brake and onto the accelerator, as he approached the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA022
- Event ID
- 20001211X11489
- Case number
- NYC99LA022
- 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: 4bd19727131fc6a931bfc08a4573e392acd7c7c473e322baf4c6b0b9f641b6c5; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:03:05.218Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N919DL; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.