Federal Express Boeing 727-200 accident
Boeing 727-200 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during pushback
From Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) to Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02LA029
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-200
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N262FE
- Operator
- Federal Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP), Greenville, SCTo Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM), Memphis, TN
- 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
- Pushback/towing
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Object › Vehicle
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the Captain, during the first phase of pushback, everything appeared normal. The first and second officers were completing the engine start check and the airplane was being pushed back from the gate when the airplane came to a stop. The tug operator stated that during pushback, the airplane nose wheel hit a patch of ice. As he applies brakes to stop the tug, the airplane began to slide. Unable to stop the movement, the tug driver jumped from the tug to avoid getting caught between the tug and airplane. The tug came to rest lodged under the fuselage of the airplane creating a 10-inch by 14-inch hole in the underside of the fuselage breaking two stringers.
Probable cause
The tug driver's failure to maintain control of the airplane during pushback resulting in the tug colliding with the airplane. A factor was ice on the ramp.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02LA029
- Event ID
- 20020110X00051
- Case number
- ATL02LA029
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-01-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 00aad562af6544b169eae9a88b5565468a974e696c259eee0a645efecc892ac4; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:07:02.554Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N262FE; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.