American Trans Air Boeing 737-300 accident
Boeing 737-300 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From LaGuardia Airport (LGA) to Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA161
- 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
Boeing 737-300
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N403TZ
- Operator
- American Trans Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LaGuardia Airport (LGA), New York, NYTo Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW), Chicago, IL
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Horizontal stabilizer › Foreign object damage
- Other maintenance personnel › Other airport/runway maintenance, improper
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 damaged when a piece of aluminum diamond plate material that was left on the taxiway during taxiway maintenance became airborne and struck the tail of the airplane while it was taxiing for takeoff. Examination by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) revealed that the plate had been left on the taxiway by workers for a company performing maintenance on the taxiway. The plate was used to cover the area on the taxiway that was receiving maintenance. According to the FAA representative, the plate was an aluminum diamond plate material, not steel, and was supposed to have been a thicker and hence heavier steel plate to prevent it from being affected by the jet blast from taxiing airplanes. Guidance to the construction company regarding the use of such plates was provided by the FAA and the airport authority.
Probable cause
The foreign object damage to the horizontal stabilizer during taxi as a result of improper airport maintenance by contract maintenance personnel. The aluminum plate was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA161
- Event ID
- 20060622X00799
- Case number
- CHI06LA161
- 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: 960dd65c3ba664e3d04bad80ffefec79830b0c5eb96bbb48e3b81073dad2db39; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:52:34.251Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N403TZ; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AMTA.