SkyWest Airlines Flight 6034
Bombardier CL-600-2B19 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing
From Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08LA051
- 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
Bombardier CL-600-2B19
- Aircraft type
- Bombardier 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
- N918SW
- Operator
- Skywest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN), Madison, WITo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), 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 · from 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
- Driver of vehicle › Clearance, not maintained
- Driver of vehicle › Procedures/directives, not complied with
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 reported that the flight had landed and was taxiing to the gate when the accident occurred. He stated that as they passed an airport service road - taxiway intersection, the airplane hit something. The captain brought the airplane to a stop, but at the time the flight crew could not see what they hit. He continued, turning left onto the next intersecting taxiway. At that time he saw the overturned tug along the south edge of the taxiway at the service road intersection. He taxied to the assigned gate and deplaned the passengers without further incident. Witnesses in a van behind the tug reported that the tug did not stop short of the taxiway and continued to move onto the taxiway as the airplane approached. The right wing of the airplane subsequently struck the tug and flipped it over. The tug driver was hospitalized for injuries received during the accident. He had no recollection of the events surrounding the accident. Witnesses recalled that the taxiway was wet at the service road intersection, but that it was not snowing at that time. The surface visibility about the time of the accident was 10 miles with no precipitation or restrictions to visibility. The airport Ground Motor Vehicle Operation Regulations Manual stated that, "All ground vehicle operators must yield the right-of-way to an aircraft in motion."
Probable cause
The tug driver's failure to yield the right-of-way to the airplane prior to crossing the active taxiway as required by airport procedures, and his subsequent failure to maintain clearance with the airplane. A contributing factor was the presence of the tug on the taxiway at the time the airplane passed the service road intersection. Additional factors were the wet pavement and the night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08LA051
- Event ID
- 20071231X02012
- Case number
- CHI08LA051
- 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: 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 2007-12-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c9c4ddcdaf0233a3f7ee7083e4cc04487ed2d9dceb6bd5d8acad7c0260ca5cce; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:39:35.100Z.