Delta Air Lines McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Co MD-88 accident
McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Co MD-88 · Accident: ground handling event during pushback
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to John Glenn Columbus International Airport (CMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA038
- 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
McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Co MD-88
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- 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
- N922DL
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo John Glenn Columbus International Airport (CMH), Columbus, OH
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the tug driver, during pushback of the airplane from the gate, he turned the airplane early in order to avoid an airplane at an adjacent gate. He further stated that he did not straighten the tug in time, and it impacted the left side of the airplane he was pushing, which resulted in substantial damage to airplane's nose landing gear support beam and a puncture in the pressure vessel. According to the pilot of the flight, during pushback, the airplane overshot the centerline and was being moved back to the centerline when he observed the tug continue aft and then heard a metallic sound. The pilot further stated that the pushback did not appear to be too fast and that there appeared to be only minor directional control problems with the tug until the impact.
Probable cause
The tug driver's inadequate control of the tug while maneuvering the airplane during pushback.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA038
- Event ID
- 20111018X03714
- Case number
- ERA12CA038
- 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: f39d9434fec27dd3571bbbe0d9e7c9b9bb2e7460e93863ab83630fa53533c006; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:51:30.342Z.