Gulfstream International Flight 9204
Beech 1900C · Incident en route
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Grand Bahama International Airport (MYGF)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00IA164
- 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
- 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
Beech 1900C
- 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
- N154GA
- Operator
- Gulfstream International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)To Grand Bahama International Airport (MYGF), Freeport
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Procedures/directives, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 'fwd cabin door' annunciator light was inoperative and MEL'd; it was scheduled to be examined later that evening. Six discrepancies in the previous year pertaining to the forward airstair door annunciator were recorded; the latest discrepancy was 2 days earlier. The captain briefed the MEL item with the first officer (F/O), who reported closing and locking the forward airstair door, and verifying such. The F/O reported only verbally briefing the passenger adjacent to the door about the door opening procedures but did not demonstrate. After takeoff at 800 feet 800 feet msl, the forward airstair door opened. An emergency was declared, the flight returned and landed uneventfully. The propeller blades and aft cables of the forward airstair door were damaged; the door latching mechanism operated normally. The company F/O's are taught to verbally discuss with passengers the door opening procedure without demonstrating. Several of the company F/O's reported partially opening the forward airstair door to demonstrate the procedure to the passenger; accomplishing this after closing and locking the door. Post incident, the F/O was vague about how to verify that the forward airstair door is locked. The results of drug screening of the captain and FO were negative.
Probable cause
The failure of the first officer to comply with procedures and directives for his failure to assure that the forward airstair door was closed and locked. A contributing factor in the incident was the inoperative annunciation system of the forward airstair door.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00IA164
- Event ID
- 20001212X21060
- Case number
- MIA00IA164
- 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: 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: ae1680c1c85a0057f762e3b7c74c5831708890f0696b37f26c557deed8a54b24; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:36:46.720Z.