Alaska Airlines Flight 536
McDonnell Douglas MD-83 · Accident: decompression en route
From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) to Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06LA033
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-83
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-83
- 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
- N979AS
- Operator
- Alaska Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WATo Hollywood Burbank/Bob Hope Airport (BUR), Burbank, CA
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Decompression
- 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
- Fuselage, pressure bulkhead › Punctured
- 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 captain said that the airplane arrived late into Seattle, from its previous flight, and the new flight crew was waiting at the gate. After the airplane was chocked and the engines were shut down, the first officer immediately performed his preflight inspection. A ground baggage handler, who was driving a tug towing a train of baggage carts, said that he approached the airplane from aft to forward, but had to maneuver around another train of carts to get close to the belt loader. After loading the carts with baggage, he attempted to drive away. He stated, "I was hoping to make it out, but I felt my tug going against something. I immediately set my foot on the brakes and glanced at the body [in moderate rain] of the aircraft to see if there was any damage. It was a quick glance and I did not see any damage." He did not report the incident to anyone. The pilot said that the takeoff was normal. During the climb out, at approximately 26,000 feet, they heard a loud bang, and the cabin depressurized. He said that they put their oxygen masks on, and coordinated a descent to a lower altitude with Seattle Center. An uneventful landing was performed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Seattle, Washington. Post landing examination of the fuselage revealed a 12 by 6 inch hole between the middle and forward cargo doors on the right side of the airplane. After the occurrence, the ground baggage handler confessed that he had "grazed the airplane" with a tug, while attempting to depart the vicinity of the airplane.
Probable cause
The ground personnel baggage handler failed to maintain clearance from the aircraft with cargo handling equipment during ground operations and inadvertently damaged the airplane's pressure bulkhead which subsequently decompressed during climb to cruise.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06LA033
- Event ID
- 20051229X02026
- Case number
- SEA06LA033
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-12-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dc3a5e0aeddb66e6241e2c146d8a45ef151c9e826b6649634f92e406ece2180a; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:56:21.899Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N979AS; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ASAA.