AVAir Flight 3378
Fairchild SA227-AC · Controlled flight into terrain due to pilot error
From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) to Richmond International Airport (RIC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA88MA032
- 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
- 12 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 12
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Fairchild SA227-AC
- Flight
- FVA378
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild SA227
- 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
- N622AV
- Operator
- Avair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), Raleigh, NCTo Richmond International Airport (RIC), Richmond, VA
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Climb › Not maintained
- Copilot/second pilot › Visual/aural detection
- Pilot in command › Monitoring, inadequate
- Visual/aural perception
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
AVAir Flight 3378 was a scheduled flight from Raleigh–Durham International Airport to Richmond International Airport operated by Air Virginia that crashed after takeoff from Raleigh-Durham International Airport late on the night of February 19, 1988. All 12 people on board were killed in the accident.
Accident sequence
The weather at the time of the accident included a low ceiling and low visibility. The flight crew consisted of Captain Walter R. Cole Jr., 38, and First Officer Kathleen P. Digan, 28. The aircraft did not carry a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) or a flight data recorder (FDR) and was not required to at the time.
AVAir Flight 3378 took off from Raleigh–Durham International Airport at 21:25 local time and climbed to a height of 300 ft. Shortly after, the last transmission from the aircraft to the air traffic control was heard. The aircraft maintained an appropriate climb speed but at an excessive rate of turn, 40 to 45 degrees; a standard turn rate would have been 22 degrees. Due to the turn, the plane started to descend. The aircraft then struck the water in a reservoir 100 ft from the shoreline, at a point 5100 feet west of runway 23R. The wreckage then continued onto land and into a forest. Some post-crash fires also were seen at the crash site, but were quickly extinguished.
According to the local controller, he heard but could not see the immediate previous plane, an American MD-80, depart. He saw the MD-80 on radar and cleared AVAir 3378 for departure. He briefly saw AVAir 3378 in the air, observed it on radar, and then cleared a Piedmont airplane to depart. In the next 3 minutes, he cleared a Cessna to land, coordinated with the departure controller, and attempted to locate AVAir 3378. At 2131:45, the RDU local controller alerted the emergency systems.
This accident was rated as unsurvivable by the NTSB due to extreme destruction of the aircraft.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The NTSB published its report into the disaster on December 13, 1988. They found that the preliminary cause of the accident was the failure of the flight crew to maintain a proper flight path because of the improper instrument scanning by the first officer and the flight crew's response to a perceived fault in the stall warning system. Contributing features were the lack of company response to documented indications of difficulties in the first officer's piloting, and the lack of FAA surveillance of AVAir.
In 1993, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) filed a petition against the findings of the investigation and asked it to be reconsidered. The NTSB accepted the petition in part. The causes of the crash were changed to: "The probable cause of this accident was the failure of flight crew to maintain a proper flightpath. Contributing factors were the ineffective management and supervision of flight crew training and operations and inappropriate FAA surveillance of AVAir."
Text from the Wikipedia article “AVAir Flight 3378” (revision 1365800998, 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 AIRCRAFT DEPARTED DURING LOW CEILING, LOW VISIBILITY, AND NIGHT CONDITIONS. SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF THE AIRCRAFT IMPACTED A RESERVOIR. ANALYSIS OF RADAR DATA INDICATED THE ACFT WAS IN A 45 DEGREE DESCENDING TURN. EXAM OF THE ACFT TRIM SYSTEM SHOWED THAT THE ACFT WAS TRIMMED FOR LEVEL FLIGHT. THERE WAS NO VOICE OR FLIGHT DATA RECORDER ON BOARD. A REVIEW OF ATC COMMUNICATIONS INDICATED THAT THE CAPTAIN WAS COMMUNICATING WITH ATC ALLOWING THE FIRST OFFICER TO ACCOMP-LISH THE FLYING DUTIES. EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED NO INDICATIONS OF POWERPLANT OR SYSTEM FAILURES. HOWEVER, THERE WAS EVIDENCE THAT THE SAS WARNING LIGHT WAS ILLUMINATED, THE SAS SWITCH WAS IN THE OFF POSITION, AND NO SAS SYSTEMMALFUNCTION COULD BE FOUND. WITNESSES STATED THAT BEFORE THE FLIGHT THE CAPTAIN HAD COMPLAINED OF ILLNESS BUT HE DECIDEDTO REPORT FOR DUTY. COMPANY RECORDS SHOWED INSTANCES OF SUBSTANDARD PERFORMANCE BY THE FIRST OFFICER. THE INVESTIGATION FOUND COMPANY OVERSIGHT OF TRAINING, OPERATIONS, AND INADEQUATE FAA SUPERVISION. (SEE NTSB/AAR-88/10)
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: AVAir Flight 3378
- Article
- AVAir Flight 3378
- Revision
- 1365800998 · 2026-07-24 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q4655029
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA88MA032
- Event ID
- 20001213X25040
- Case number
- DCA88MA032
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "AVAir Flight 3378" (page 35114263, revision 1365800998); merged with NTSB case DCA88MA032 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA88MA032: NTSB API eventDate, eventTimeUtc and eventTimeUtcOffsetHours (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA88MA032
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA88MA032: 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 DCA88MA032: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA88MA032: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA88MA032: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "AVAir Flight 3378" and NTSB case DCA88MA032, 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1988-02-20.