Colgan Air Flight 4972
Beech 1900D · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD) to Augusta State Airport (AUG)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05IA128
- 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
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
- N136MJ
- Operator
- Colgan Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knox County Regional Airport (RKD), Rockland, METo Augusta State Airport (AUG), Augusta, ME
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Flight control, elevator attachment › Loose
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 rotation, the captain pulled the yoke with both hands, but it did not move. The captain then pulled significantly harder, and the yoke moved quickly aft. The airplane jumped into the air, but the captain was able to maintain controlled flight, and continue to the destination airport. During cruise flight, everything was normal except that the elevator trim moved slowly nose up, which required an input of 1/2-unit nose down trim every 1 to 2 minutes. Subsequent examination of the airplane revealed that the left elevator could be moved around by hand. Further examination revealed that seven rivets were loose, and one rivet was missing in the vicinity of the left side elevator outer hinge-point attach bracket. Ground tests were unable to duplicate the elevator anomaly as reported by the captain. However, a fleet inspection of the operator's aircraft revealed that five of the eleven airplanes had loose rivets on the elevator hinge-point attach brackets. In addition, fleet inspections of other operators' same make and model aircraft revealed that some of the airplanes had loose rivets on the elevator hinge-point attach brackets. The suspect rivets and elevator were replaced on the incident airplane, and the anomaly did not reoccur.
Probable cause
A loose elevator attachment, which resulted in a partial elevator binding during takeoff and uncommanded elevator movement during cruise.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05IA128
- Event ID
- 20050810X01209
- Case number
- NYC05IA128
- 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: c5c9ecf91272eb8f390ad6ed8da382cdfbf0741ad7484034bcdc27bbdd071de4; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:59:41.126Z.