Command Airways Short Brothers SD3-60 incident
Short Brothers SD3-60 · Incident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC89IA107
- 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
Short Brothers SD3-60
- Aircraft type
- Short Brothers SD3
- 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
- N163DD
- Operator
- Command Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGuardia Airport (LGA), New York City, NYTo not recorded
- 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 · 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Engine assembly › Failure, total
- Engine assembly › Ice
- Pilot in command › Anti-ice/deice system, not selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
COMMAND AIRWAYS FLT 4887, REPORTED THE LOSS OF POWER ON BOTH ENGINES WHILE FLYING IMC AT A CRUISE ALT OF 7000 FEET ABOUT 28 NM SOUTH OF ALBANY, NY. THE PILOT WAS ABLE TO RESTART THE NUMBER 1 ENGINE AND LAND WITHOUT ANY FURTHER PROBLEM. THERE WAS EVIDENCE OF WATER FOUND IN THE COWLING OF BOTH ENGINES. TESTS SHOWED NO DISCREPANCIES IN EITHER ENGINE. AT THE TIME OF THE FLAME OUTS, THE CREW HAD 'ON' LEVEL 3 ANTI-ICE, MINUS THE ENGINE COWLING VEINS AND WINDSHEILD.
Probable cause
THE CREW'S FAILURE TO USE FULL ENGINE ANTI-ICE SYSTEMS WHICH RESULTED IN ICE BLOCKING THE ENGINE INLETS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC89IA107
- Event ID
- 20001213X27987
- Case number
- NYC89IA107
- 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, 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: 44ffb6a935c5a69c2c4b6e253c8da02e242ca11e14596bb3683494547a622840; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:13:03.963Z.