Airtran Airways Flight 67
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during pushback
From Dulles, VA to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA056
- 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
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N837AT
- Operator
- AirTran Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dulles, VATo Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- 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
- Company/operator management › Procedures/directives, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The DC-9-32 was parked at the gate, with an inoperative APU, and the ramp was covered with snow and ice. The captain reported that a single engine cross bleed start would require an N1 of about 80% on the operative engine. He therefore elected to start both engines at the gate, and then proceed with the pushback. The operators manual stated that if a headset was used, it would be worn by the tug driver. The tug driver did not wear the headset because the headset chord had been broken and repaired multiple times, and was too short to reach the tug driver. A walker near the nose of the airplane was wearing the headset. During pushback, as the tug driver tried to push the nose of the airplane to the west, the airplane encountered icy conditions, moved forward, and struck the tug. At the time of loss of traction, the tug was nearly 90 degrees to the right side of the nose of the airplane. The forward movement of the airplane was observed by the tug driver, who stopped the tug, but with no headset, he could not notify the cockpit crew. The walker near the nose of the airplane, wearing the headset, reported that he was looking away, and did not observe the airplane moving forward in time to make a call to the cockpit. The pushback was accomplished by a contract crew that had been trained in accordance with the airlines GMM, which did not contain specific direction for pushbacks on icy surfaces.
Probable cause
The lack of direction from the operator on how to perform pushbacks on an icy ramp, which led to the tug driver positioning the tug at an angle to the nose of the airplane that allowed the airplane to move forward and strike the tug. Factors were the inadequate visual lookout by the walker wearing the headset, and the icy ramp.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA056
- Event ID
- 20020214X00216
- Case number
- NYC02LA056
- 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: investigation status, coordinates. 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: ea1c6f2772eb7e66d0514e7240b347f86365dbca11b63bb35870d76287cab5fa; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:06:32.142Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N837AT; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ZZDA.