Northeast Express Regional Airlines Flight 3724
Northeast Express Airlines Fairchild SA 227-AC · Propeller incident with personal injury
From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO94LA002
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground (occupants minus survivors)
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- Occupants
- Unknown
- 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
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Fairchild SA 227-AC
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild SA-227
- 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
- N550TD
- Operator
- Northeast Express Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)To Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), Boston, MA
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Propeller/rotor contact to person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Ground personnel › Inattentive
- Ground personnel › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Newark, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
Northeast Express Regional Airlines Flight 3724 was a scheduled regional flight of the airline Northwest Airlink from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, to Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. On 5 November 1993 an incident occurred on this flight when a female member of the ground staff at Newark Airport walked into the running propeller of a Fairchild SA-227C Metro III (N550TD) and was killed.
Accident sequence
The aircraft was at Newark Airport in the area of Terminal B, Satellite B4, at Gate 40 and was being handled for the flight to Boston. N550TD was one of three aircraft that had been at the gate at the time. The flight was already 40 minutes late. Many aircraft departed from Newark Airport with delays that day because of the weather. At the aircraft was a 22-year-old employee of Precision Airlines, a subsidiary of the Northeast Air Group, which operated the aircraft concerned. The woman was entrusted with marshalling the aircraft and handling the boardings and was initially alone at the gate. Later a colleague came to assist her.
The aircraft was still connected to the ground power unit (GPU) when the woman, standing in front of the aircraft in the pilots' field of view, first gave a hand signal to start the right engine and then to start the left engine. The captain then gave the signal to disconnect the aircraft from the GPU. This was located to the right behind the aircraft. The captain later stated that, after giving the signal, he had turned his gaze to his cockpit instruments to check whether the indication for the GPU went out. The first officer's gaze was directed at the start checklist.
Another member of the boarding staff, who had just handled another aircraft, joined to help the woman. He stated that after receiving the signal to disconnect the GPU connection, she had walked around the outside of the right wing to the rear part of the aircraft. After disconnecting the plug of the GPU connection, the woman had walked with the cable to the tail of the aircraft. She had given the cable to the male employee, who then stowed it in the GPU cart. The woman walked back towards the aircraft's cockpit in order to marshal the pilots for departure. When her colleague looked up while stowing the cables, he saw that his colleague, contrary to regulations, was walking not around the wing but towards it. The man shouted the woman's name several times to stop her, which she did not perceive because of the ear protection she was wearing and the background noise.
Having reached the wing, the woman bent down to walk underneath it. In doing so she walked into the propeller and was struck by the propeller blades, which were rotating at a speed of 1113 revolutions per minute.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Northeast-Express-Regional-Airlines-Flug 3724” (revision 258176125, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
THE RAMP AGENT WAS SERVICING A FLIGHT THAT WAS 40 MINUTES BEHIND ITS SCHEDULED DEPARTURE TIME. AFTER BOTH ENGINES HAD BEEN STARTED, THE CAPTAIN GAVE THE HAND SIGNAL TO DISCONNECT THE AIRPLANE FROM THE GROUND POWER UNIT (GPU). UPON RECEIVING THE SIGNAL, THE RAMP AGENT WALKED FROM THE FRONT OF THE AIRPLANE, AROUND THE RIGHT WING, AND TO THE REAR OF THE AIRPLANE. A SECOND RAMP AGENT THEN ARRIVED TO ASSIST. THE FIRST RAMP AGENT DISCONNECTED THE GPU, HANDED THE PLUG TO THE SECOND RAMP AGENT, DUCKED UNDER THE RIGHT WING, WALKED FORWARD INTO THE PROPELLER ARC, AND WAS STRUCK SEVERAL TIMES BY THE MOVING PROPELLER. THE RAMP AGENT RECIEVED TRAINING ON RAMP SAFETY AND WAS DESIGNATED AN INSTRUCTOR OF RAMP SAFETY. THREE AIRPLANES WERE AT THE GATE AREA AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. THE RAMP AREA DOES NOT HAVE ANY MARKINGS FOR AIRPLANE PARKING OR GROUND OPERATIONS. THE MANUALS USED BY THE AGENT'S EMPLOYER DID NOT REFERENCE WALKING UNDER WINGS OR CLEARANCE FROM PROPELLER ARCS DURING RAMP OPERATIONS.
Probable cause
1) THE FAILURE OF THE RAMP AGENT TO FOLLOW PROPER PROCEDURES DURING THE SERVICING OF THE AIRPLANE, AND 2) HER LACK OF ATTENTION TO THE HAZARDS SURROUNDING HER. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT ARE 1) THE PRESSURE PLACED ON THE RAMP AGENT TO RUSH THE SERVICING OF THE DELAYED FLIGHT, AND 2) THE INADEQUATE MANUALS PROVIDED BY THE OPERATOR CONCERNING RAMP SAFETY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Northeast-Express-Regional-Airlines-Flug 3724
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 258176125 · 2025-07-21 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q65241922
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record BFO94LA002
- Event ID
- 20001211X13697
- Case number
- BFO94LA002
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Northeast-Express-Regional-Airlines-Flug 3724" (page 10762781, revision 258176125), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case BFO94LA002 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record BFO94LA002: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record BFO94LA002
- Map position
- NTSB record BFO94LA002: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record BFO94LA002: 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 BFO94LA002: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record BFO94LA002: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record BFO94LA002: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Northeast Express Regional Airlines Flight 3724" and NTSB case BFO94LA002, 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 Wikipedia infobox's fatality count includes the ground fatalities (its survivors account for everyone else aboard); those aboard who died are that count minus the ground fatalities.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. 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.