Great Lakes Airlines Flight 5087
Beech 1900D · Incident: on ground/water collision with object while standing
From Denver International Airport (DEN) to Telluride Regional Airport (TEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06IA019
- 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
- N253GL
- Operator
- Great Lakes Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, COTo Telluride Regional Airport (TEX), Telluride, CO
- 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 · engine(s) not operating
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Ground personnel › Clearance, not maintained
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 with the engines shut down, the parking brake set, and the wheels chocked. The captain said that they kept the passengers on board until some of the bags were off loaded from the aft baggage compartment so as not to overload the landing gear struts. The captain said that they opened the door and he got off to meet the agent. The agent approached the airplane driving a tug that was pulling a baggage cart. The captain said, "While turning the corner to line up the baggage cart with the airplane, the baggage cart struck and damaged the left-hand stabilon." The baggage cart that was used was new and taller than those previously used at the airport. This was the first time the agent had pulled this cart. The agent said he drove clockwise around the airplane to position the cart to unload the baggage. He said that he was close enough to the airplane that the top right corner of the baggage cart hit the stabilon.
Probable cause
The tug driver's failure to maintain adequate clearance from the airplane resulting in the baggage cart striking the airplane's stabilon. A factor contributing to the incident was the tug driver's failure to consider the extra height of the cart in relation to the other carts used on the airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06IA019
- Event ID
- 20051130X01905
- Case number
- DEN06IA019
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: c41587aaf0aaea2f2ab25ad0f410874fe820ddfe04e9fb36779dab7be4991b98; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:57:24.667Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N253GL; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.