Mesa Airlines de Havilland DH-8-202 accident
de Havilland DH-8-202 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during pushback
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA295
- 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
de Havilland DH-8-202 Possible conflict
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DH-8
- 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
- N455YV
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM), Yuma, AZ
- 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
- Ground personnel › Clearance, not maintained
- Ground personnel › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On push back from the gate, the airplane collided with a parked and unoccupied Bombardier CL-65. The elevator of the CL-65 sliced through the rudder of deHavilland. A ground agent was pushing the deHavilland from the gate and did not clear the 30-foot turn line. He then pushed the tail into the CL-65; as a result, the elevator of the CL-65 sliced through the rudder of the deHavilland. The operator felt the accident could have been prevented if the ground agent would have watched his wing walkers during the push back and cleared the turn line, prior to turning the airplane.
Probable cause
the ground agent's inadequate visual lookout during push back, which resulted in his failure to maintain clearance between the airplanes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA295
- Event ID
- 20031021X01788
- Case number
- LAX03LA295
- 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. 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: 930b7e6efc0c273b7ed96f0d5ab6d0ce744987e5c760faac12764242a08197b0; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:40:34.253Z.