DCA96IA005 · Boeing B-737-500
United Airlines Boeing B-737-500 · Incident: loss of control in flight on approach
From San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA96IA005
- 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing B-737-500
- 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
- N904UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Francisco International Airport (SFO)To not recorded
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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 · VFR go-around
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of San Francisco, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On October 29, 1995, at 1239 PST, a United Airlines Boeing 737-500, N904UA, experienced an upset during a maintenence test flight while on an ILS approach to San Francisco International Airport (SFO). The upset occurred when the flight crew was given a go-around by approach control and the captain selected the takeoff and go-around switch. The airplane pitched up to about 45 degrees nose up and the stick shaker activated. The pilots stated that they pushed the control column forward and both attempted to retrim the nose down but were not able to overcome the increase in pitch. The airplane stalled, rolled slightly, and the nose dropped. After the flightcrew recovered from the upset, the airplane made a normal landing at SFO.
Probable cause
The inadvertant stall for undertermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA96IA005
- Event ID
- 20001207X04678
- Case number
- DCA96IA005
- 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: 9e4f06831f7a83c2f35b278d34a8af9fb20f7d0f7c6516d08e62096f4b9b74b0; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:05:21.779Z.