Accident · 1997-01-09

What the record says

Event date

1997-01-09

Event type

Accident

Highest injury level

Fatal injury

Aircraft

Embraer EMB-120RT (N265CA)

Operating rule

Part 135

Operator

Comair Limited Operator named in NTSB report

Operated by (per NTSB report)

COMAIR, INC.

Probable cause

The Federal Aviation Adminstration's (FAA) failure to establish adequate aircraft certification standards for flight in icing conditions, the FAA's failure to ensure that at Centro Tecnico Aeroespacial/FAA-approved procedure for the accident airplane's deice system operation was implemented by U.S.-based air carriers, and the FAA's failure to require the establishment of adequate minimum airspeeds for icing conditions, which led to the loss of control when the airplane accumulated a thin, rough, accretion of ice on its lifting surfaces. Contributing to the accident were the flightcrew's decision to operate in icing conditions near the lower margin of the operating airspeed envelope (with flaps retracted) and Comair's failure to establish and adequately disseminate unambiguous minimum airspeed values for flap configurations and for flight in icing conditions.

Flight crew

Flight-crew details for this event aren't in the NTSB database extract we hold (its coverage starts with 2008 events) — a gap in our data, not an absence of crew.