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NYC04IA010 · Beech 1900D

16 Oct 2003 · Albany, NY, United States

Beech 1900D · Incident during takeoff

From Albany International Airport (ALB) to Westchester County Airport (HPN)

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Event

NTSB case
NYC04IA010
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
General aviation
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

Beech 1900D

Aircraft type
Beechcraft 1900
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
N850CA
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, NYTo Westchester County Airport (HPN), White Plains, NY
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 91: General Aviation
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
Takeoff · roll/run
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
Miscellaneous/other
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

  • Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, improper
  • Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, not performed

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

During the takeoff roll, the flightcrew was unable to rotate the airplane, and the takeoff was aborted uneventfully. Examination of the airplane revealed that when the elevator trim wheel in the cockpit was positioned to neutral, the elevator trim was actually in the full nose-down position. The elevator trim wheel could not be physically moved lower than 3 units of nose up trim. The incident flight was the first flight after maintenance, in which the elevator trim wheel was removed and reinstalled. The maintenance technician did not index the trim wheel when he removed it, and reinstalled the trim wheel incorrectly. In addition, the maintenance did not contain a procedure to remove and reinstall the elevator trim wheel. Following the maintenance, no functional check of the elevator trim system was performed. When the captain performed a preflight inspection of the airplane, he did not set the elevator trim wheel to the setting prescribed on the preflight checklist, and he failed to detect the error.

Probable cause

The maintenance technician's improper maintenance performed on the airplane, and his failure to perform a functional check, which resulted in a restricted movement of the elevator trim wheel. Factors were the captain's inadequate preflight inspection, and insufficient information in the manufacturer's maintenance manual.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record NYC04IA010
Event ID
20031023X01801
Case number
NYC04IA010
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: f05c11ce43ddd2a827d7bf29c81ee69fe64779c2ba6e9146ccf37680c4f55e9f; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:20:02.583Z.