Commutair Flight 4480
Beechcraft 1900D · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while standing
From BTU · Burlington, VT to PLB
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA206
- 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
Beechcraft 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N858CA
- Operator
- Commutair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BTU · Burlington, VTTo PLB
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
All passengers except one had disembarked from the airplane. As the last passenger approached the first step of the airstairs, he 'lost his balance,' and reached for the right side guide cable. The top anchor bracket of the guide cable became disconnected and the passenger fell down the stairs, striking the pavement with his right side. The anchor bracket was manufactured from an aluminum casting. Five months after the accident, a service bulletin was issued which addressed replacement of the upper anchor brackets for the airstair door forward and aft handrail cables. The replacement was required due to reports of separations of the upper anchor brackets. The bulletin also stated, 'Separation of these handrail cable upper anchor brackets can result in the airstair door becoming unstable in addition to loss of handrail support for crew, maintenance personnel or passengers when using the handrail.' The new upper anchor bracket was an improved design machined from steel alloy.
Probable cause
The failure of the upper anchor bracket for the airstair door.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA206
- Event ID
- 20001212X20729
- Case number
- NYC00LA206
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-03-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0a38ebea50f1f5147a1287e6c22fd1a42f535247c3495e976c460f32bbec19e0; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:45:00.645Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N858CA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.