Trans Colorado Airline Swearingen SA227-AC incident
Swearingen SA227-AC · Incident: in flight encounter with weather
From Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN84IA070
- 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-AC
- 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
- N31088
- Operator
- Trans Colorado Airline
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NMTo 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 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
- Other
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Copilot/second pilot › Airspeed, inadequate
- Directional control › Not maintained
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ACCORDING TO THE CAPTAIN, THE COPLT WAS MAKING THE LANDING & CROSSED THE THRESHOLD AT 50 TO 60 FT AGL AT 110 TO 115 KTS. HE SAID A SLIGHTLY HIGHER AIRSPEED WAS USED TO COMPENSATE FOR A SMALL ABOUNT OF ICE THAT REMAINED ON THE LEADING EDGE OF THE WINGS. IN THE FLARE, THE ACFT YAWED LEFT & REPORTEDLY TOUCHED DOWN WITH THE NOSE ABOUT 15 DEGS TO THE LEFT. THE LEFT MAIN WHEEL TOUCHED DOWN ABOUT 21 FT FROM THE EDGE OF THE 150 FT WIDE RWY. THE CAPT TOOK CONTROL & APPLIED CORRECTIVE ACTION, BUT THE ACFT WENT OFF THE RWY, HIT A SNOW BANK & MUD, THEN THE NOSE GEAR COLLAPSED.THE NORMAL APCH SPEED WAS 103 KTS FOR THE ACFT'S WEIGHT. ACCORDING TO THE FLT MANUAL, THE APCH SPEED SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCREASED BY 19 KTS IF THERE WAS ICE ON THE FLYING SURFACES.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN84IA070
- Event ID
- 20001214X38554
- Case number
- DEN84IA070
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1984-01-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3e68b8c75121c5c7a32fad27aec8f5f7d6e0745e711d29ce75832988a612efda; retrieved 2026-09-18T20:45:30.350Z.