ERA15LA292 · Israel Aircraft Industries 1125 WESTWIND ASTRA
Mountain Air Services Israel Aircraft Industries 1125 WESTWIND ASTRA · Accident: dragged wing/rotor/float/other during landing
From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) to Chicago Executive Airport (PWK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA292
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Israel Aircraft Industries 1125 WESTWIND ASTRA
- Aircraft type
- Israel 1125
- 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
- N765A
- Operator
- Mountain Air Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MDTo Chicago Executive Airport (PWK), Chicago, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1986)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Dragged wing/rotor/float/other
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After the passengers boarded the airplane, the pilot monitoring closed the cabin door and stated that he visually checked that the main entry door was secure and locked. Throughout the start, taxi, and takeoff procedures the CABIN DOOR and CABIN DOOR SEAL lights were not illuminated. Then, immediately after takeoff, the flight crew identified that the CABIN DOOR, CABIN DOOR SEAL, and MASTER CAUTION lights were illuminated. During the return to the airport for landing, the main entry door opened. The crew subsequently declared an emergency and landed uneventfully. The airplane incurred substantial damage to the door and airframe during the landing; the passengers and crew were not injured.
Examination of the door and the locking mechanisms revealed that when the door was latched with the locking pin in the stirrup, the door was secured. However, when the locking pin was resting on the stirrup, and not in the stirrup, the CABIN DOOR warning light would not illuminate. The light would illuminate on the warning annunciator when the locking mechanism was pulled away from and not in contact with the stirrup. Furthermore, the self-locking air springs on the door did not function. Without the self-locking feature, the door lacked a secondary safety feature that could have prevented the accident. It is likely that when the pilot monitoring closed the cabin door, the locking pin rested on the stirrup and did not fully engage, and the pilot monitoring did not visually check that the locking mechanism was secure in the stirrup. Since the CABIN DOOR light would not illuminate if the locking pin was resting on the stirrup, the crew was not alerted to the unsecured position of the main entry door. According to maintenance records, the most recent inspection of the door and its locking mechanism was completed about one month before the accident. It could not be determined whether the failure of the air springs occurred before the most recent inspection and was not identified, or if the failure occurred after the inspection.
Probable cause
The flight crew's failure to visually ensure that the cabin door locking pin was in place before takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA292
- Event ID
- 20150801X43013
- Case number
- ERA15LA292
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-07-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5ae69a807df3942648b20e07cc832df03db2bd2ece0f42530c3826597df7bcdd; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:36:36.674Z.