British Airways Flight 265
Boeing 767 336 · Incident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while taxiing
From London Heathrow Airport (EGLL) to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA10IA006
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 767 336
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- G-BNWY
- Operator
- British Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From London Heathrow Airport (EGLL), LondonTo Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), Dulles International Airport, VA
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain stated that during the taxi, the airplane was always on the yellow painted line on the pavement, and that the parking area appeared clear of vehicles and obstructions. The lead marshaller was indicating “all clear” with lighted wands, and as the airplane neared the final parking position, it came to a stop. The first officer characterized the stop as “gentle”, as if the aircraft had met an inclined ramp. The lead marshaller continued to indicate “taxi forward” and some engine thrust was applied by the first officer, but because the airplane did not move, he retarded the throttles. The lead marshaller then indicated a routine “stop”.
An examination of the B38/B40 parking area revealed that the B40 gate was not retracted and parked within its safety zone by airline personnel. Due to the proximity of jetways B38 and B40 to a ramp road or lane utilized by ground support vehicles, Evergreen E.A.G.L.E policy called for wing marshallers to remain near the road as aircraft are parked. This allowed them to stop ground support vehicle traffic until the parking airplane’s engines were shut down. At the time of the incident, they did not “walk the wings” into the parking spots.
The lead marshaller stated that he was in place on top of an airplane tug, but that jetway B38 blocked his view of the outer portion of the left wing as the airplane taxied toward him. He stated that he did not see the left side marshaller make any signals to stop the airplane. The left side marshaller, positioned behind the airplane at the ramp road, stated that he saw that the left wing was about to contact jetway B40, and signaled to the lead marshaller to stop the airplane. When he saw that the lead marshaller was not responding, he ran forward, but by that time the wing contact had already occurred.
Probable cause
The failure of the lead and left side marshallers to identify the B40 jetway obstacle and stop the airplane's taxi before the wingtip contacted the jetway.
Contributing to the cause of this incident were inadequate marshalling procedures used by the ground support company, which failed to: (1) provide sufficient personnel to ensure that visual contact was maintained at all times when airplanes were taxiing to the gate area and (2) verify proper positioning of jetways in the taxi path of the airplane before directing airplanes into the gate area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA10IA006
- Event ID
- 20091105X93509
- Case number
- DCA10IA006
- 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: 10664742d61cdb51cc1c062e1f0381124f7f64b9c741128b4de2731b83d881c5; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:28:31.859Z.