Mesa Airlines - Incidents

Incidents

On October 16, 2001, an EMB 145 was on final approach to Roanoke, Virginia. The captain had briefed a "no go-around" for a night visual approach to a "Special Airport." The approach was not stabilized, and the airspeed decreased to the point of a stall. The airplane struck the runway in a nose high pitch attitude, the aft fuselage struck the runway first then settled on the landing gear. The first officer made initial callouts of slow airspeed and then stopped when the captain failed to respond to her callouts. After landing, the airplane was taxied to the gate where a post flight inspection limited to the main landing gear did not find the damage to the tail section. The incident was not reported by either pilots to the Company and the airplane was allowed to be flown by the next crew the following morning on its scheduled service back to Charlotte, NC where a post flight inspection revealed the tail strike. When interviewed, the captain first denied having been involve in a hard landing and speculated that the tail strike must have been the result of an over rotation on takeoff from the morning crew. When faced with the CVR and FDR data, she eventually admitted to the incident. She reported that she briefed "no go-around" because no takeoffs were authorized on the runway at night or in IMC conditions; however, the first officer knew this was incorrect, but did not challenge the captain. Both pilots had received CRM training, which included crewmember assertiveness, methods of fostering crew input, and situational awareness, and training on special use airports; however it was not followed by either pilot. The captain said the first officer was passive and quiet. The first officer reported the captain was defensive and did not take criticism very well. It is remarkable that the damage to the tail section was not discovered during the preflight visual inspection performed by the morning flight or ground crews. The aircraft had an MELed APU and needed the engines to be started with the assistance of an external air cart. The connection for the air cart is located at the aft bottom fuselage section where the damages were visible. The access panel was in fact bent. Yet the ground crew did not notify the flight deck crew. When the walk around visual inspection was performed by the morning crew's first officer, it was performed during the hours of darkness with the help of a flashlight. The air cart was already connected and forced the first officer to walk around the cart and away from the aircraft, missing the tail strike damages.

On August 9, 2002, an alcohol smell was noted by security screeners at the Little Rock National Airport on a Mesa Airlines Captain as he arrived to pilot his Embraer ERJ 145LR. The pilot was fired by the airline. A flight attendant and first officer were also suspended pending investigation at the time of the incident.

On February 13, 2008, the pilots of a go! CRJ200 fell asleep and overshot their destination airport by 26 nautical miles (48 km; 30 mi) before Air Traffic Control was able to make contact with the aircraft. The incident happened on the third consecutive day during which the pilots had been required to start duty at 0540 am. The captain suffered from an undiagnosed severe sleep apnea. The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause of this incident as follows: "The captain and first officer inadvertently falling asleep during the cruise phase of flight. Contributing to the incident were the captain's undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea and the flight crew’s recent work schedules, which included several consecutive days of early-morning start times."