Colgan Air Flight 9446
Beech 1900D · Crashed shortly after takeoff due to maintenance error and pilot error
From Cape Cod Gateway Airport (HYA) to Albany International Airport (ALB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03MA183
- 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
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 2
- 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
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
Beech 1900D
- Flight
- 9L9446
- 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
- N240CJ
- Operator
- Colgan Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cape Cod Gateway Airport (HYA), Hyannis, MATo Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, NY
- 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 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 · emergency landing after 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, replacement, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Colgan Air Flight 9446 was a repositioning flight operated by Colgan Air for US Airways Express. On August 26, 2003, the Beechcraft 1900 crashed into water 300 ft offshore from Yarmouth, Massachusetts, shortly after taking off from Barnstable Municipal Airport in Hyannis. Both pilots were killed.
Accident
Flight 9446 departed Barnstable Municipal Airport on August 26, 2003, at 15:40 EDT. Shortly after takeoff, the crew declared an emergency and reported a trim problem. The aircraft entered into a left turn and reached an altitude of 1,100 ft. The pilots requested a return to Barnstable, and air traffic control cleared the flight to land on any runway. The airplane continued its left turn in a nose-up attitude, and then pitched down and crashed into water near the airport.
Investigation and cause
Investigation and aftermath
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the accident.
The NTSB determined that Flight 9446 was the first flight after maintenance personnel had replaced the forward elevator trim cable. The maintenance personnel had skipped a step in the maintenance process. In addition, the aircraft maintenance manual depicted the elevator trim drum backwards. As a result, the trim system was configured in a manner that caused the trim wheels in the cockpit to move in the correct direction, but the actual trim tab (which controlled the flight control surfaces) moved in the opposite direction.
The NTSB also determined that the pilots did not notice the maintenance error because the captain failed to perform a preflight checklist, which included an elevator trim check. The pilots manually set nose-up trim prior to departure. However, because of the improper maintenance, this set the elevator trim to the full nose-down position.
The NTSB determined that it would have taken 250 pounds of force on the control yoke for the pilots to keep the plane airborne, making a safe landing nearly impossible. Investigators programmed a flight simulator with the improper trim settings and made six simulated flights. Five attempts resulted in crashes shortly after takeoff; in one attempt, the simulator pilot could circle for a landing but impacted terrain while attempting to land.
The NTSB published its findings and determination of probable cause on August 31, 2004. The NTSB determined that the probable causes of the accident were the maintenance crew's improper replacement of the forward elevator trim cable and the subsequent inadequate functional check of the maintenance performed. The NTSB also identified the flight crew's failure to follow the checklist procedures and the aircraft manufacturer's erroneous depiction of the elevator trim drum in the maintenance manual as contributing to the accident.
After the NTSB's final report was published, Aero News Network observed that Beechcraft 1900D maintenance manuals were considered accident factors in two previous fatal accidents. However, Raytheon, the owner of Beechcraft, denied blame for the crash of Flight 9446, and a company spokesman said that the accident would not have happened without the Colgan Air maintenance crew's mistakes.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Colgan Air Flight 9446” (revision 1361990069, 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 accident flight was the first flight after maintenance personnel replaced the forward elevator trim cable. When the flightcrew received the airplane, the captain did not address the recent cable change noted on his maintenance release. The captain also did not perform a first flight of the day checklist, which included an elevator trim check. Shortly after takeoff, the flightcrew reported a runway trim, and manually selected nose-up trim. However, the elevator trim then traveled to the full nose-down position. The control column forces subsequently increased to 250 pounds, and the flightcrew was unable to maintain control of the airplane. During the replacement of the cable, the maintenance personnel skipped a step in the manufacturer's airliner maintenance manual (AMM). They did not use a lead wire to assist with cable orientation. In addition, the AMM incorrectly depicted the elevator trim drum, and the depiction of the orientation of the cable around the drum was ambiguous. The maintenance personnel stated that they had completed an operational check of the airplane after maintenance. The Safety Board performed a mis-rigging demonstration on an exemplar airplane, which reversed the elevator trim system. An operational check on that airplane revealed that when the electric trim motor was activated in one direction, the elevator trim tabs moved in the correct direction, but the trim wheel moved opposite of the corresponding correct direction. When the manual trim wheel was moved in one direction, the elevator trim tabs moved opposite of the corresponding correct direction.
Probable cause
The improper replacement of the forward elevator trim cable, and subsequent inadequate functional check of the maintenance performed, which resulted in a reversal of the elevator trim system and a loss of control in-flight. Factors were the flightcrew's failure to follow the checklist procedures, and the aircraft manufacturer's erroneous depiction of the elevator trim drum in the maintenance manual.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Colgan Air Flight 9446
- Article
- Colgan Air Flight 9446
- Revision
- 1361990069 · 2026-07-01 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q5144772
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record NYC03MA183
- Event ID
- 20030904X01459
- Case number
- NYC03MA183
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Colgan Air Flight 9446" (page 21527599, revision 1361990069); merged with NTSB case NYC03MA183 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record NYC03MA183: events.ev_date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NYC03MA183
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NYC03MA183: 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 NYC03MA183: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities (the NTSB record states no total)
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NYC03MA183: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Colgan Air Flight 9446" and NTSB case NYC03MA183, 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.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local date may be a day earlier.