Aero Charter and Transport Cessna 402C accident
Cessna 402C · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Gallup Municipal Airport (GUP) to Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA094
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Cessna 402C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N596DM
- Operator
- Aero Charter & Transport
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gallup Municipal Airport (GUP), Gallup, NMTo Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · from 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
- 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 › Airport operations, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After the dark night landing, the airplane exited the runway onto the taxiway. After exiting the runway, the pilot stopped the airplane, retracted the flaps, turned off the landing light, and radioed ground control for clearance to taxi to parking. After receiving clearance, the pilot began taxiing to parking with the taxi lights on. As the airplane neared an access road intersection on the taxiway, the pilot observed a vehicle to his left stopped at the northbound stop sign. The pilot did not see any traffic to his right at the southbound stop sign. As the airplane entered the intersection, the pilot caught a flash of light to his right. A baggage tug, with only the right head light illuminated, struck the airplane's right wing.
Probable cause
The failure of the tug driver to stop at the stop sign resulting in a collision with a taxiing airplane. A contributing factor was the dark night light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA094
- Event ID
- 20020319X00364
- Case number
- FTW02LA094
- 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: 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 2002-03-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2aba16594465a9ec10420b144ca416f43cdff3249c652ae61a19eca8b30dd21f; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:04:38.351Z.