Chautauqua Airlines Flight CHQ5019
Embraer EMB-135KL · Incident: ground handling event during pushback
From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ) to Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11IA270
- 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
Embraer EMB-135KL
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB-135
- 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
- N377SK
- Operator
- Chautauqua Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ), Dubuque, IATo Dubuque Regional Airport (DBQ), Dubuque, IA
- 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
- Pushback/towing
- 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
- Ground handling event
- 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 from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flightcrew was preparing the airplane for departure from the gate. The nose wheel was still chocked, the auxiliary power unit was running, and the engines were not operating. The gate agent had moved the jet bridge about 20 to 25 feet from the airplane, when a strong wind gust pushed the jet bridge back into the airplane, which created about a 20-inch gash in the fuselage below the captain’s window. The airport had deactivated the brake system on the jet bridge during the winter months since the brakes would routinely freeze. The gate agents who were operating the jet bridge attempted to keep it from being blown into the airplane, but with the brake system deactivated, they were unable to do so. The Emergency Stop was inoperable when the brakes were deactivated. When the Emergency Stop button was pushed, the brakes would not engage. Pushing the Emergency Stop button also cut the power to the control panel so moving the joystick had no effect. After the incident occurred, the airport had the brake system activated, and the jet bridge operated normally.
Probable cause
The airport authorities' improper decision to deactivate the jet bridge braking system which created an unsafe condition by the gate agents not being able to stop the bridge from impacting the airplane during a wind gust.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11IA270
- Event ID
- 20110406X54825
- Case number
- CEN11IA270
- 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, 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: ab30b44acfec2b4e61f8de28620fad3f0222eae38cb04d79bfad19485493eb36; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:01:00.749Z.