Chautauqua Airlines Flight 6169
Embraer EMB-145LR · Accident: cabin safety event before flight
From KCVG · Cincinnati, OH to Raleigh-Durham International Airport (KRDU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA13CA056
- 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 EMB-145LR
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB-145
- 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
- N283SK
- Operator
- Chautauqua Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KCVG · Cincinnati, OHTo Raleigh-Durham International Airport (KRDU), Raleigh-Durham, NC
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On February 19, 2013 at 3:20 pm eastern standard time, a flight attendant fell from an open service door on an Embraer E145, registration N283SK, at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG). The airplane was operated under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 by Chautauqua Airlines as flight 6169, with an intended destination of Raleigh-Durham International Airport, North Carolina. There were no other injuries to the three flight crew and 50 passengers, and no damage to the airplane. The airplane was stationary at the boarding gate and passengers were boarding the aircraft. The CVG weather observation at the time of the event reported wind from 260 degrees at 25 knots, gusting to 35 knots. The flight attendant stated that after opening the door for the galley service crew, a gust of wind blew papers in the galley area and as she attempted to retrieve them, the wind blew her out the door. The safety strap had not been attached at the time of the event. The flight attendant experienced a serious injury to her vertebrae.
Probable cause
an inadvertent fall out of the open service door because the safety strap was not attached.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA13CA056
- Event ID
- 20130220X85257
- Case number
- DCA13CA056
- 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, damage. 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: a9426ad59935a42e69bc5782cac4e7767cd48e68af7c2678d2b7419780e77eaf; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:58:59.545Z.