USAir Flight 1493

USAir Flight 1493 was a scheduled United States (US) domestic passenger flight from Syracuse Hancock International Airport, New York to San Francisco International Airport, California that accidentally collided with SkyWest Flight 5569 upon landing at a scheduled stopover at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The evening of Friday, February 1, 1991, saw slow to moderate air traffic at LAX, but as the USAir 737 was on final approach, a series of abnormalities distracted the local controller, including an aircraft that inadvertently switched off the tower frequency and a misplaced flight progress strip which resulted in the SkyWest Metroliner being told to taxi into takeoff position while the USAir flight was landing on the same runway without the Metroliner ever being given a takeoff clearance.

Upon landing, the 737 collided with the twin-engine turboprop, continued down the runway with the turboprop crushed beneath it, exited the runway, and caught fire. Twenty-two of 89 people aboard the landing 737 and all 12 aboard the turboprop died. Rescue workers were on the scene of the fire within minutes and began the evacuation of the plane. Because of the intense fire three of the 737's six exits could not be used. Neither of the front exits were usable, which caused the front passengers to try to use the overwing exits. However, only one of the overwing exits was usable, which caused a backlog to form. Most of those aboard the 737 who died in the accident did so from asphyxiation in the post-crash fire.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found the probable cause of the accident to be procedures in use at the Los Angeles International Airport control tower which provided inadequate redundancy, leading to a loss of situational awareness by the local controller. The crash led directly to the NTSB's recommendation of using different runways for takeoffs and landings at LAX.