Great Lakes Aviation Flight 5187
Raytheon Aircraft Company 1900D · Incident during takeoff
From Page Municipal Airport (PGA) to Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08IA096
- 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
Raytheon Aircraft Company 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
- N261GL
- Operator
- Great Lakes Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Page Municipal Airport (PGA), Page, AZTo Four Corners Regional Airport (FMN), Farmington, NM
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Organizational issues › Management
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The scheduled air carrier was departing from an airport. During taxi, cockpit voice recorder data indicated that the first officer was stating and verifying the checklists, as well as taxiing the airplane. Company standard operating procedures required that those checklists be called out by one crewmember and verified by the other. The flight crew spoke of personal matters and did not follow the sterile cockpit regulations as specified by 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 21.542. The captain stated that during takeoff, the cargo door light illuminated, the aft cargo door opened, and the flight crew returned to land at the airport. According to the airplane manufacturer, if the door is not closed and locked, a cockpit light will illuminate indicating that the door is not secure. Following the accident, operation of the door and functionality of the cockpit indicator light were verified. The cargo door indicator light is to be checked by both crewmembers on the Before Takeoff checklist. Due to the flight crew’s lack of professionalism and deviation from standard operating procedures, they most likely did not see that the light was illuminated prior to departure.
Probable cause
The flight crew’s unprofessional behavior and deviation from standard operating procedures which resulted in an in-flight emergency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08IA096
- Event ID
- 20080331X00404
- Case number
- SEA08IA096
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: 40a00e466d952c695e14a39fd45526f19a6ded3c75ad791c80394927f9046347; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:28:38.242Z.