Federal Express Flight 1004
Boeing 727-233 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during pushback
From an unrecorded airport to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA027
- 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
Boeing 727-233
- 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
- N269FE
- Operator
- Federal Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CA
- 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
- Pushback/towing
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Other person › Airport snow removal, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A tug was pushing the aircraft back from the gate when the wheels of the airplane got stuck in snow. The tow bar shear pin, designed to break under excessive loads, snapped in half. The tug struck the airplane, breaking its windshield and causing damage to the aircraft's radome and forward pressure bulkhead. Airport operations personnel are responsible for the removal of snow. According to a ramp manager from the Federal Express Corporation, the snow bank in which the aircraft became mired was 12-16 inches from both the ramp and service road. He stated that the snow should have been plowed but allowed to accrue in that location.
Probable cause
Snow removal not done by other person.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA027
- Event ID
- 20001211X11549
- Case number
- DEN99LA027
- 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 1998-12-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1d6a453cd603dab4200d9ee0a28694086a5be604effac3d5cd098e860424d918; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:01:20.056Z.