CommutAir Flight 4821
Beech 1900C · Controlled flight into terrain due to pilot error
From Plattsburgh International Airport (PLB) to Newark Liberty International Airport (SLK)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA92MA016
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 4
- Survivors
- 2
- 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
- 2
- 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
Beech 1900C
- 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
- N55000
- Operator
- Commutair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plattsburgh International Airport (PLB), Plattsburgh, NYTo Newark Liberty International Airport (SLK), Saranac Lake, 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 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Monitoring, inadequate
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, improper
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
On Friday, January 3, 1992, a Beechcraft 1900C operating CommutAir Flight 4821 crashed into a wooded hillside near Gabriels, New York while conducting an ILS approach to Runway 23 at the Adirondack Regional Airport. The cause of the accident was determined to be pilot error. There were two people killed in the crash, and two survivors.
Accident
Flight 4821 was a regularly scheduled early morning USAir Express flight from Plattsburgh, New York, to Newark, New Jersey, with intermediate stops in Saranac Lake and Albany, New York. The crew for Flight 4821 were Captain Kevin St. Germain, 30, and First Officer Dean Montana, 23. There were two passengers on board, one of which was an off-duty CommutAir employee.
Shortly before the crash occurred, the aircraft had contacted CommutAir officials on the ground at the airport. During the descent into Saranac Lake, the crew descended below the glide slope and crashed into a hill at 5:45am. First Officer Montana and the company employee passenger were killed. Captain St. Germain and the other passenger survived the crash with injuries.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The aircraft was new and the crew was experienced. Immediately following the accident, there was no clear cause.
The aircraft was not required to be equipped with a flight data recorder (FDR), therefore, a flight data recorder was not present. The aircraft was equipped with a cockpit voice recorder (CVR) but it was burned to the point that the data inside were not usable. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) used aircraft position data from air traffic control, the aircraft wreckage, survivor interviews, and weather information to find its probable cause.
The NTSB blamed the pilots for the crash. Captain St. Germain failed to stabilize the approach, cross check the instruments, and descended below the minimum altitude, while First Officer Montana failed to monitor the approach. The contributing factors to the crash were weather and possible precipitation static interference, which could have caused unreliable glide slope indications.
Text from the Wikipedia article “CommutAir Flight 4821” (revision 1339298412, 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
ON IFR ARRIVAL, FLT 4821 WAS CLEARED TO INTERSECTION 17 NE OF AIRPORT AT 6000', THEN FOR ILS RUNWAY 23 APPROACH. RADAR SERVICE WAS TERMINATED 6.5 EAST OF INTERSECTION. RADAR DATA SHOWED THAT FLIGHT CROSSED & THEN BRACKETED LOCALIZER. FLIGHT INTERCEPTED GLIDE SLOPE FROM BELOW ABOUT 7 MI OUTSIDE OF OUTER MARKER & THENCE DEVIATED ABOVE GLIDE SLOPE. ABOUT 2 MILES OUTSIDE OF MARKER, FLIGHT WAS AT A FULL FLY DOWN DEFLECTION WHEN IT ENTERED A DESCENT VARYING FROM 1200 TO 2000 FPM. AIRCRAFT STRUCK WOODED MOUNTAIN TOP 2.0 MI INSIDE OF OUTER MARKER (3.9 MI FROM RWY) AT ELEVATION OF 2280'. MINIMUM ALTITUDE AT MARKER WAS 3600'. GLIDE SLOPE ELEVATION AT POINT OF IMPACT WAS APRX 2900'. EVIDENCE WAS FOUND OF INADEQUATE ELECTRICAL GROUND PATH BETWEEN RADOME & FUSELAGE WHICH, WHEN COMBINED WITH EXISTING WEATHER CONDITIONS, MAY HAVE PRODUCED ELECTROSTATIC DISCHARGE (PRECIPITATION STATIC). ALTHOUGH POST-ACCIDENT TESTS WERE NOT CONCLUSIVE, THE SAFETY BOARD BELIEVES THAT THE GLIDE SLOPE INDICATIONS MIGHT HAVE BEEN UNRELIABLE DUE TO PRECIPITATION STATIC INTERFERENCE.
Probable cause
FAILURE OF THE CAPTAIN TO ESTABLISH A STABILIZED APPROACH, HIS INADEQUATE CROSS-CHECK OF INSTRUMENTS, HIS DESCENT BELOW SPECIFIED MINIMUM ALTITUDE AT THE FINAL APPROACH FIX, AND FAILURE OF THE COPILOT TO MONITOR THE APPROACH. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: WEATHER CONDITIONS AND POSSIBLE PRECIPITATION STATIC INTERFERENCE, CAUSED BY INADEQUATE GROUNDING BETWEEN THE RADOME AND FUSELAGE THAT COULD HAVE RESULTED IN UNRELIABLE GLIDE SLOPE INDICATIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: CommutAir Flight 4821
- Article
- CommutAir Flight 4821
- Revision
- 1339298412 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q22022180
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA92MA016
- Event ID
- 20001211X13974
- Case number
- DCA92MA016
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "CommutAir Flight 4821" (page 48516121, revision 1339298412); merged with NTSB case DCA92MA016 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA92MA016: NTSB API eventDate, eventTimeUtc and eventTimeUtcOffsetHours (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA92MA016
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA92MA016: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA92MA016: 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 DCA92MA016: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA92MA016: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA92MA016: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "CommutAir Flight 4821" and NTSB case DCA92MA016, 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.