Commutair Flight 2529
Raytheon BE-1900D · Accident while standing
From Westchester County Airport (HPN) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA042
- 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
Raytheon BE-1900D
- Aircraft type
- Raytheon BE-1900
- 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
- N858CA
- Operator
- CommutAir
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NYTo Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), Boston, MA
- 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
- 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
- Passenger › Miscellaneous, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While parked on the ramp, with the engines were shut down, the first officer opened the main cabin door and exited the airplane. As the first officer stood between the main cabin door airstair and the left engine propeller blades, he observed a passenger, wearing sandal type shoes with no rear strap, deplaning. The first officer also observed that the passenger carried a medium sized bag around her left shoulder, another bag being carried with her right hand, and a book in her left hand. As the passenger stepped onto the first step, the first officer assisted her by guiding the bag being carried on her left shoulder away from the handrail. The passenger continued down the stairs, and when her right foot came down onto the last step, she lost her balance, and fell to the ground. The passenger was transported to a local hospital where she was diagnosed with a broken femur bone.
Probable cause
The passengers misjudged step, which resulted in a loss of balance and subsequent fall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA042
- Event ID
- 20020104X00022
- Case number
- NYC02LA042
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-12-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6393d03af159d2961523125d8cf05d2659b016900a535768fa8da91611d9e695; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:07:19.445Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N858CA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.