Prinair Flight 191
Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority de Havilland DH114 · Pilot error
From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) to Mercedita International Airport (PSE)
Event
- 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
- 5 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 20
- Survivors
- 15
- 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
- 15
- 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
de Havilland DH114
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DH114
- 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
- N554PR
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU)To Mercedita International Airport (PSE)
- 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 (scheduled domestic passenger service)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Stall
- 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
- Pilot in command › Improper operation of flight controls
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Prinair Flight 191 was a Prinair (Puerto Rico International Airlines) flight from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Mercedita Airport in Ponce, Puerto Rico. At approximately 11:15pm on June 24, 1972, the aircraft crashed while attempting to land at Mercedita Airport. Five people died in the accident and the remaining people were injured.
Flight and accident
The flight was uneventful up to the moment of landing. As the flight was late at night, the control tower at Mercedita Airport was closed, therefore the flight crew was responsible for the landing clearance. Just after touching down on the runway at Mercedita Airport the flight crew made a decision to go around. The pilot over-rotated the aircraft and caused it to stall at a low level and crash; three passengers and the two flight crew members died, the other fifteen passengers were injured, seven severely. Heavy fog was also a contributing factor in this accident.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation concluded that the probable cause was the "presence of an unauthorized vehicle on the runway which caused the pilot to attempt a go-around after touchdown to avoid a collision. The maneuver resulted in an overrotation of the aircraft at too low an airspeed to sustain flight". This was based on eyewitness accounts of a set of lights visible on the runway as Flight 191 approached, and other eyewitness accounts of a vehicle owned by the Puerto Rico Ports Authority being parked shortly after the accident and the driver acting in a suspicious manner.
Three years after the accident the NTSB was compelled to re-open the investigation into the crash, after submissions were received that the person who was suspected of driving the "unauthorized vehicle" had actually left the airport about fifteen minutes before the aircraft crashed. The second investigation concluded that there was no airport vehicle on the runway, and that the reason for the go-around of the aircraft was unknown; a new report was issued, explaining the evidence as to the location of the airport vehicle and amending the Probable Cause to remove reference to a vehicle being on the runway.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Prinair Flight 191” (revision 1357279493, 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 remarks
OVERROTATED AT TOO LOW A/S, LOST DIRECTIONAL CONROL. REASON FOR GO-AROUND UNK.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: Prinair Flight 191
- Article
- Prinair Flight 191
- Revision
- 1357279493 · 2026-06-01 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q7243720
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19720624P044061
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Prinair Flight 191" (page 399771, revision 1357279493); merged with NTSB case NTSB19720624P044061 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19720624P044061: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19720624P044061
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19720624P044061: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19720624P044061: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic passg.svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19720624P044061: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19720624P044061: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Prinair Flight 191" and NTSB case NTSB19720624P044061, 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.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.