Aloha Airlines Flight 289
Boeing 737-209 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94IA206
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Boeing 737-209
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N804AL
- Operator
- Aloha Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA), KONA, HITo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), HI
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Electrical system, electric relay › Failure, total
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Honolulu, HI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On approach, the crew lowered the landing gear, but noticed none of the gear position lights were illuminated. Prior to landing, the captain found both the public address and interphone to be inoperative. A visual approach was performed with a normal touchdown. During rollout, the crew discovered that the thrust reversers would not deploy. After turning off the runway, the flight attendants began to smell smoke. The captain stopped on the taxiway and initiated an emergency evacuation. One passenger received a minor sprain while using the emergency slide. An inspection revealed that a multiple system loss had occurred due to the 28-volt DC battery bus going off-line. The condition was duplicated during troubleshooting and the failed part was identified as a battery transfer relay (R2). The source of the on board smoke was not identified.
Probable cause
The failure of the battery transfer relay resulting in multiple system failures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94IA206
- Event ID
- 20001206X01122
- Case number
- LAX94IA206
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-04-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4c070a43a729dddb1cdad704f411d371c31e961191b35fda798f87a28f4f3994; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:17:16.342Z.