Air Midwest Flight 5481
Beech 1900D · Stall due to maintenance error, overloading
From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA03MA022
- 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
- Event fatalities
- 21 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 21
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 1 · all on the ground
- 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
Beech 1900D
- Flight
- ZV5481
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N233YV
- Operator
- Air Midwest
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Charlotte, NCTo Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP), Greer, SC
- 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
- Takeoff
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft performance, takeoff capability › Deteriorated
- Aircraft weight and balance
- Company maintenance personnel › Improper use of procedure
- Company/operator management › Material inadequate
- Flt control syst, elevator control › Movement restricted
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, adjustment, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
Air Midwest Flight 5481 was a Beechcraft 1900D which crashed upon takeoff while on a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Greenville–Spartanburg International Airport in Greer, South Carolina. On the morning of January 8, 2003, the Beechcraft stalled while departing the airport and crashed into an aircraft hangar, killing all 21 passengers and crew aboard and injuring one person on the ground.
Flight information
Air Midwest Flight 5481 (operating as a US Airways Express flight under a franchise agreement with US Airways) was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Charlotte Douglas International Airport near Charlotte, North Carolina, to Greenville–Spartanburg International Airport in Greer, South Carolina. On January 8, 2003, Flight 5481 was operated by a Beechcraft 1900D (registration number N233YV). The aircraft was originally delivered to Air Midwest, then leased to Ministic Airlines, then returned to Air Midwest. It had accumulated 15,003 flight hours at the time of the crash. It had been in one previous accident in 1997 with Ministic.
Two crew members and 19 passengers were aboard the Beechcraft. Both crew members and 12 passengers were American; the rest were from different nationalities. The crew consisted of Captain Catherine "Katie" Leslie (age 25) and First Officer Jonathan Gibbs (age 27). Leslie was the youngest captain flying for the airline at that time, and had accrued 1,865 hours total company flying time, including 1,100 hours as the pilot-in-command of a Beechcraft 1900D. Gibbs had 706 hours of flying time in Beechcraft 1900D aircraft. Both pilots were based in Charlotte.
Investigation and cause
Cause of the crash
The investigators determined the crash to have been the result of the combination of two separate issues. After take-off, the plane climbed steeply as a result of higher than calculated weight on the aircraft that generated an incorrect center of gravity readout. Though both pilots pushed forward on the control column, the plane did not respond to their input, which led to the stalling of the aircraft.
The aircraft's most recent service involved adjusting the elevator control cable, and was performed two nights before the crash by Vertex Aerospace at a repair facility located at Tri-State Airport in Huntington, West Virginia. The investigation indicated the mechanic who worked on the elevator cables had never worked on this type of aircraft before, and turnbuckles controlling tension on the cables to the elevators had been set incorrectly, resulting in insufficient elevator travel, leading to the pilots not having sufficient pitch control. Although normally a postadjustment control test would be conducted to ensure that the maintenance had been carried out correctly, and that the surface was operating properly, the maintenance supervisor who was instructing the mechanic decided to skip this step. The instructing maintenance supervisor was also the quality assurance inspector on the test, as the primary inspector was unavailable that evening. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) noted that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was aware of "serious deficiencies" in the training procedures at the facility, but had done nothing to correct them.
Although the pilots had totaled up the ostensible take-off weight of the aircraft before the flight and determined it to be within limits, the plane was actually overloaded and out of balance due to the use of FAA-approved (but actually incorrect) passenger weight estimates. When checked, the NTSB found that the actual weight of an average passenger was more than 20 pounds (9 kg) greater than estimated. After checking the actual weight of baggage retrieved from the crash site and passengers (based on information from next-of-kin and the medical examiner), the aircraft was found to be actually 580 lb (264 kg) above its maximum allowable take-off weight, with its center of gravity 5% to the rear of the allowable limit.
Neither problem alone would have caused the loss of control, which explains why it had previously been flown without incident and had safely departed Huntington, West Virginia.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Air Midwest Flight 5481” (revision 1359352030, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The Safety Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/publictn.htm. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-04/01.
On January 8, 2003, about 0847:28 eastern standard time, Air Midwest (doing business as US Airways Express) flight 5481, a Raytheon (Beechcraft) 1900D, N233YV, crashed shortly after takeoff from runway 18R at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, Charlotte, North Carolina. The 2 flight crewmembers and 19 passengers aboard the airplane were killed, 1 person on the ground received minor injuries, and the airplane was destroyed by impact forces and a postcrash fire. Flight 5481 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, Greer, South Carolina, and was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 on an instrument flight rules flight plan. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
the airplane's loss of pitch control during take-off. The loss of pitch control resulted from the incorrect rigging of the elevator system compounded by the airplane's aft center of gravity, which was substaintially aft of the certified aft limit.
Contributing to the cause of the accident were (1) Air Midwest's lack of oversight of the work being performed at the Huntington, West Virginia, maintenance station; (2) Air Midwest's maintenance procedures and documentation; (3) Air Midwest's weight and balance program at the time of the accident; (4) the Raytheon Aerospace quality assurance inspector's failure to detect the incorrect rigging of the elevator control system; (5) the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) average weight assumptions in its weight and balance program guidance at the time of the accident; and (6) the FAA's lack of oversight of Air Midwest's maintenance program and its weight and balance program.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Air Midwest Flight 5481
- Article
- Air Midwest Flight 5481
- Revision
- 1359352030 · 2026-06-14 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q553492
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA03MA022
- Event ID
- 20030110X00049
- Case number
- DCA03MA022
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Air Midwest Flight 5481" (page 1922645, revision 1359352030); merged with NTSB case DCA03MA022 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA03MA022: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA03MA022
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA03MA022: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA03MA022: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record DCA03MA022: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA03MA022: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA03MA022: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Air Midwest Flight 5481" and NTSB case DCA03MA022, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- 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.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The narrative states the flight was "a regularly scheduled passenger flight to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, Greer, South Carolina"; GSP is in South Carolina, not North Carolina.