Comair Flight 3860
Canadair CL-600-2B19 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Tulsa International Airport (TUL) to CVG · Cincinnati, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02IA097
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Canadair CL-600-2B19
- Aircraft type
- Canadair CL-600
- 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
- N960CA
- Operator
- Comair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa International Airport (TUL), TulsaTo CVG · Cincinnati, OH
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after departure, the flight crew received STAB TRIM and MACH TRIM caution messages on the Electronic Information Control Advisory System (EICAS), and the horizontal stabilizer control system would not reset. The crew declared an emergency, and the flight returned to the departure airport and landed without incident. Company maintenance personnel removed and replaced the horizontal stabilizer trim control unit (HSTCU), and motor control unit (MCU) from the airplane, and the airplane was returned to service. The HSTCU and MCU were tested and examined per manufacturer specifications, and no anomalies were noted that would have contributed to the caution messages. The failure of the horizontal stabilizer control system was not determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the horizontal stabilizer control system for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02IA097
- Event ID
- 20020326X00394
- Case number
- FTW02IA097
- 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, coordinates, damage. 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: 70f2b298c125de348afdd6c41893b8378c018e0ebd5cfbb1cf63a5c906925161; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:04:45.893Z.