Allegheny Commuter incident near Middletown
Pennsylvania Airlines for Allegheny Commuter Short Brothers SD3-30 · Suicide of a passenger
From Harrisburg International Airport (MDT) to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC84LA015
- 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
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 29
- 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
Short Brothers SD3-30
- Aircraft type
- Short Brothers SD3
- 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
- N26288
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harrisburg International Airport (MDT)To Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington, DC
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Passenger › Suicide, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
The Pennsylvania Airlines incident near Middletown occurred on 28 October 1983 aboard a Shorts 330 on a regional flight of Allegheny Commuter from Harrisburg in Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., when during the initial climb a passenger committed suicide by jumping from a height of more than 1000 metres.
Accident sequence
Before the flight, an aircraft fueller saw a man standing at the end of the queue during boarding. He asked him where he was flying to. The man replied that he would be flying to Washington D.C. or to a place in between.
When the man boarded the aircraft, he addressed the flight attendant by her first name, pointed to a seat near the right rear door and asked to be allowed to sit there. The flight attendant complied with the man's request.
The departure from Harrisburg proceeded without any particular occurrences. During the initial climb, when the aircraft had reached an altitude of 3500 feet (approx. 1060 metres), the flight attendant heard a loud, dull noise from the rear part of the aircraft. A passenger shouted: “Oh my God, he jumped!” It turned out that the man had stood up in flight, opened the door and committed suicide by jumping out of the aircraft. After the jump, the aircraft's door remained partly open, as one of the man's shoes remained wedged in the door gap.
The aircraft remained undamaged and was able to return safely to the airport.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Zwischenfall der Allegheny Commuter bei Middletown” (revision 262972849, 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
AFTER TAKEOFF ON A FLT TO WASHINGTON, DC, THE AIRCRAFT WAS CLIMBING THRU ABOUT 3500 FT WHEN A PERSON (RIDING AS A PASSENGER) MOVED TO THE RIGHT REAR DOOR, OPENED IT & DEPARTED THE ACFT. PRIOR TO THE FLT, AN ASSOCIATE, WHO WAS AN ACFT REFUELER, SAW THE PERSON NEAR THE END OF THE BOARDING LINE. THE REFUELER ASKED THE PERSON WHERE HE WAS GOING; THE PERSON REPLIED DC OR SOMEPLACE IN BETWEEN. WHEN THE PERSON GOT ON BOARD, HE SPOKE TO THE FLT ATTENDANT BY NAME & ASKED FOR A SPECIFIC SEAT NEAR THE RIGHT REAR DOOR. WHEN THE ACFT WAS CLIMBING AFTER TAKEOFF, THE FLT ATTENDANT HEARD AIR NOISE FROM THE OPENED DOOR & ALSO HEARD SOMEONE SCREAM 'MY GOD, HE JUMPED.' AFTER THE PERSON JUMPED, THE DOOR REMAINED PARTIALLY OPEN WITH HIS SHOE WEDGED IN THE DOORWAY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Zwischenfall der Allegheny Commuter bei Middletown
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 262972849 · 2026-01-02 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q65246912
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record NYC84LA015
- Event ID
- 20001214X44944
- Case number
- NYC84LA015
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Zwischenfall der Allegheny Commuter bei Middletown" (page 10766828, revision 262972849), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NYC84LA015 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record NYC84LA015: NTSB API eventDate, eventTimeUtc and eventTimeUtcOffsetHours (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NYC84LA015
- Map position
- NTSB record NYC84LA015: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NYC84LA015: 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 NYC84LA015: operated under Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NYC84LA015: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NYC84LA015: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Allegheny Commuter incident near Middletown" and NTSB case NYC84LA015, 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, 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.