US Airways Flight 1290
Embraer ERJ 190-100 IGW · Accident: cabin safety event during landing
From Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL) to LaGuardia Airport (KLGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA11CA036
- 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
Embraer ERJ 190-100 IGW
- Aircraft type
- Embraer ERJ-190
- 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
- N957UW
- Operator
- US Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL), Philadelphia, PATo LaGuardia Airport (KLGA), New York, NY
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Cabin safety event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On February 24, 2011 at approximately 2330 eastern standard time, a passenger was seriously injured aboard an Embraer 190, U.S. registration N957UW, operated by USAirways as flight 1290 during landing on runway 22 at New York LaGuardia airport (LGA). The flight was a regularly scheduled domestic flight from Philadelphia, PA (PHL).
The aircraft operated two flight segments earlier in the day without incident. Moderate turbulence was reported during final approach, and one of the flight attendants reported observing the aft beverage cart rolling forward. Upon landing during deceleration the cart traveled forward down the aisle striking a passenger's ankle in seat 11D. The B flight attendant and an onboard doctor attended to the passenger. Once at the gate, police and paramedics arrived and removed the passenger by stretcher.
US Airways maintenance in LGA examined the cart brakes and the side restraint latches onboard the aircraft and found no anomalies with their operation. No previous maintenance history was found for this aircraft concerning cart restraint latches.
Probable cause
Improper latching of the aft galley cart prior to landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA11CA036
- Event ID
- 20110329X33129
- Case number
- DCA11CA036
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-02-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e83919ff94a6d2e6512c3aa8f340f8d5909de93272fb4de711acb62d8ebdabcc; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:59:05.090Z.