PenAir Flight 4028
Swearingen SA227 · Incident: on ground/water collision with object during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC94IA020
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Swearingen SA227
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA227
- 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
- N630PA
- Operator
- PenAir
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AK
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRPLANE BEGAN TO DIVERGE TO THE RIGHT OF THE RUNWAY CENTERLINE DURING THE INITIAL TAKEOFF RUN AT A GROUND SPEED OF BETWEEN 20 AND 30 KNOTS. THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND (PIC) GLANCED AT THE ENGINE INSTRUMENTS AND OBSERVED AN ASYMMETRY IN TORQUE BETWEEN THE PLANE'S TWO ENGINES. THE PIC REPORTED THAT IN HIS HASTE TO ACCOMPLISH THE ABORT, HE WAS NOT ABLE TO GET THE LEFT POWER LEVER BACK TO THE GROUND IDLE POSITION PRIOR TO THE IMPACT WITH THE NORTHWEST ARRESTING BARRIER PIT. THE PIC SAID THAT HE DEPRESSED THE NOSE WHEEL STEERING BUTTON BUT DID NOT PUSH THE BUTTON ON THE ENGINE POWER LEVER TO ENGAGE THE NOSE WHEEL STEERING. THE REASON FOR THE DELAYED OR DECREASED TORQUE FROM THE NO. 2 ENGINE COULD NOT BE CONCLUSIVELY DETERMINED.
Probable cause
THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND DID NOT MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRPLANE AND DID NOT PERFORM THE APPROPRIATE PROCEDURES FOR AN ABORTED TAKEOFF. A FACTOR IN THE INCIDENT WAS THE ASYMMETRY IN POWER BETWEEN THE PLANE'S TWO ENGINES FOR UNDETERMINED REASONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC94IA020
- Event ID
- 20001211X13673
- Case number
- ANC94IA020
- 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: ea8fe4085281d036ae091584669fbdecb766f073f3c120c000c7e3e5e58c421c; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:25:03.694Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N630PA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.