US Airways Flight 471
Fokker F-100 · Incident en route
From LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to Richmond International Airport (RIC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00IA231
- 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
Fokker F-100
- Aircraft type
- Fokker F-100
- 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
- N860US
- Operator
- US Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGuardia Airport (LGA), FLUSHING, NYTo Richmond International Airport (RIC), Richmond, VA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Landing gear, gear switch › Failure
- Thrust reverser, cockpit control › Malfunction
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Norfolk, VA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During decent for landing, the flight crew experienced a temporary inadvertent deployment of the left engine thrust reverser. The flight crew declared an emergency and diverted to a nearby airport, where the airplane landed without further incident. Examination of the thrust reverser control system revealed that if thrust lever was moved aggressively to the aft stop, the left engine's thrust reverser switch could actuate. Additionally, faults were observed in left main landing gear Ground/Flight (G/F) switch, and the left engine thrust reverser deploy switch. After the left main landing gear G/F switch and the thrust lever switchbox were replaced, the airplane's thrust reverser system tested "ok."
Probable cause
The failure of the airplane's ground/flight switch and a malfunction of the thrust reverser deploy switch, which resulted in an in-flight thrust reverser deployment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00IA231
- Event ID
- 20001212X21828
- Case number
- NYC00IA231
- 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, damage. 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: 34e342c4c6d585bfe90df5c51951b9b3fa0b107b053d994004ddf98679fcf159; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:28:54.087Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N860US; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.