Allegiant Air Flight 4203
Douglas DC 9 83 · Incident: runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person) during landing
From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) to Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF)
Event
- NTSB case
- OPS17IA003
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Douglas DC 9 83
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N425NV
- Operator
- Allegiant Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Asheville, NCTo Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport (BAF), Westfield, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1987)
- 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
- Runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The air traffic control tower was operating with all positions combined and the local controller provided approval for an airport vacuum truck to conduct runway sweeping on the first 4000 feet of runway 02. Also operating on the airport movement areas were several other airport and state organization vehicles. The weather was 3/4 statute mile visibility with a ceiling of 200 feet overcast and the local controller could not visually observe the vehicles on the runway. In accordance with standard operating procedure, the local controller used a red "runway unavailable" memory aid to assist with remembering that the vehicles were on the landing surface. As several of the vehicles began to clear the runway, the local controller removed the red memory aide. The vacuum truck remained working on the runway. A short time later, the air traffic controller cleared the flight crew of an MD-83 aircraft to land on runway 20 while the vacuum truck was still on the approach end of runway 02.The aircraft landed and stopped about 200 feet from the vacuum sweeper which was still on the runway.
The local controller was operating with combined ground and local positions but did not combine the ground and local radio frequencies. The airport vehicles were communicating with the controller on the ground frequency and were unaware of inbound air traffic communicating with the controller on the local control frequency.
Probable cause
The air traffic controller issuing the aircraft a clearance to land while there was a vehicle authorized to be on the same runway. Contributing to the incident was the air traffic controller's decision to not simulcast the local control and ground control frequencies, and, the reduced visibility at the airport as a result of the weather.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record OPS17IA003
- Event ID
- 20161026X21815
- Case number
- OPS17IA003
- 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, 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: 13c7032fd3b2553f155f94f7fbde3a70b596ffb239ad51070d53b00f99707c10; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:46:36.871Z.