Flight 3340 · de Havilland Dash 8-100
de Havilland Dash 8-100 · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while taxiing
From Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to Westchester County Airport (HPN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA01MA056
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- 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
de Havilland Dash 8-100
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DASH 8
- 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
- N935HA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington, DCTo Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NY
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Propeller/rotor contact to person
- 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
- Ground personnel › Airport operations, inadvertent
- Ground personnel › Physiological condition
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The information collected during the investigation of this accident indicates that the ramp agent had both training and experience in working near propeller-driven airplanes and that the carelessness shown in the accident was inadvertent and out of character. This finding is substantiated by statements from coworkers, who described the ramp agent as safety conscious and a hard worker. The surface of the ramp was not a factor in this accident. The ramp agent was at the end of his shift on a very hot day and was taking a medication for a medical condition that had the potential to impair his judgment.
Probable cause
The ramp agent's impaired performance due to his hyperthyroidism, which was exacerbated by the heat and was inadequately controlled by medication, and possibly also due to the use of an antianxiety medication.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA01MA056
- Event ID
- 20010904X01867
- Case number
- DCA01MA056
- 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: d79e6e5a1fb1d6417d6a43bda455e560e1aec0b2fd23f872e6102d8382ce5645; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:10:55.572Z.