Comair Flight 5212
Bombardier CL-600-2B19 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while standing
From Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) to Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA066
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Bombardier CL-600-2B19
- Aircraft type
- Bombardier CL-600
- 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
- N784CA
- Operator
- Comair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW), Detroit, MITo Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), Covington, KY
- 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 · engine(s) not operating
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Driver of vehicle › Miscellaneous, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
An unoccupied van rolled backward and impacted the left side of the airplane causing damage. An airport police report stated, "I [the investigating police officer] interviewed the driver [of the van] who stated that the vehicle had been parked about twenty yards in front of the aircraft for about two minutes before the incident. The driver [of the van] stated that he went to check oil fittings and does not know how the vehicle struck the aircraft." The reported stated that the captain of the aircraft was interviewed and, "...He [the captain of the aircraft] observed the vehicle drive towards and then strike the aircraft moving the aircraft sideways approx. [approximately] 10 inches." Post-accident inspection of the 1988 Dodge Ram Van failed to reveal any anomalies that would prevent the normal operation of the vehicle, specifically the parking brake, the column shifter, and the parking gear.
Probable cause
The vehicle driver's inadvertent failure to place the column shifter into the parking gear. A factor to the accident was the vehicle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA066
- Event ID
- 20010117X00316
- Case number
- CHI01LA066
- 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: 3d87f5b379171b4ca8c34783a1263713360f7b0291170c4691101b0837ba530a; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:17:46.060Z.