Comair Flight 5242
Canadair CL-600-2B19 · Accident while standing
From Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA042
- 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
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
- N916CA
- Operator
- Comair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), Pittsburgh, PATo John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Jamaica, 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 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
- Standing
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Driver of vehicle › Miscellaneous, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was parked, and in the process of deplaning passengers when it was struck by an unoccupied belt loader. The driver of the belt loader stated that she was maneuvering the belt loader when she fell off due to the gusty wind conditions. The airplane was parked in a confined area of the ramp, which would have required tight turns to maneuver the belt loader. The belt loader was equipped with an operational seat belt. The operator did not require that seat belts be utilized when operating belt loaders. Winds reported at the airport, about the time of the accident were sustained at 25 knots, with 30 knot gusts.
Probable cause
An encounter with an unoccupied belt loader, after the belt loader driver inadvertently fell to the ground while maneuvering. Factors in this accident were the gusty wind conditions and the failure of the operator to require that persons operating belt loaders use seat belts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA042
- Event ID
- 20031209X02011
- Case number
- NYC04LA042
- 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: 49d56fc2c44c365ec87806f42df051312d7042cb22a3883450c155bbd1bb7b5f; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:34:21.232Z.