Business Express Flight 838
British Aerospace RJ-70 · Incident: vortex turbulence encountered on approach
From Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95IA178
- 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
British Aerospace RJ-70
- Aircraft type
- British Aerospace RJ-70
- 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
- N833BE
- Operator
- Business Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE), Cleveland, OHTo John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
- 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
- Vortex turbulence encountered
- 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
- Flight control, aileron › Disconnected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Avro RJ-70 was on approach, about 1500 ft agl, with the auto-pilot engaged, when it encountered wake turbulence from a preceding Airbus 340 and rolled left. The flying pilot, who occupied the right seat, reached for the yoke to disconnect the auto-pilot and to apply corrective aileron input. He applied large and/or abrupt movement of the ailerons before achieving an auto-pilot disconnect. The ailerons uncoupled, after which, the pilot continued with the approach and landed without further incident. A postincident test revealed that the breakaway forces for the aileron interconnect detent strut were within the manufacturer's specification. The manufacturer reported that movement of the aileron flight controls from the side opposite of the engaged auto-pilot servo could result in an aileron uncoupling. Once uncoupled, the left yoke controlled the left aileron and roll spoiler, and the right yoke controlled the right aileron and roll spoiler.
Probable cause
the aileron interconnect became uncoupled, when an abrupt and/or large aileron movement was made in response to a wake turbulence encounter, while on a VOR approach with the autopilot engaged. A factor relating to the incident was: inadequate in-flight planning/decision by the aircrew, which allowed the wake turbulence encounter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95IA178
- Event ID
- 20001207X04041
- Case number
- NYC95IA178
- 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: 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.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c72939a32d7174a73b0dc603ca5a8f658ee7ed615f26fce9c89123237a74bc49; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:58:52.401Z.