SEA96IA027 · Boeing 727-232
Boeing 727-232 · Incident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96IA027
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-232
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N543DA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, misjudged
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Boise, ID, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The flight was on a coupled Category I ILS approach in fog and dark night conditions. After passing the final approach fix, the crew was notified that the runway visibility range (RVR) was below minimums. The captain continued the approach to decision height (DH) in accordance with company operations specifications. He visually acquired the runway prior to DH and continued toward landing, disengaging the autopilot about 60 feet above the runway. The flight data recorder (FDR) indicated that the aircraft heading then began to drift right. The cockpit crewmembers stated that upon noticing the drift, the captain countered it with aileron and rudder inputs. The FDR indicated a roll angle of -7.50 degrees at the instant maximum vertical G and minimum altitude readings were recorded, increasing to -14.90 degrees one second later. Damage was observed to the left outboard slats and flap after the flight. A Boeing chart indicated that at a pitch angle of 3.9 degrees and landing sink rate of 10 feet per second, the outboard slat and flap will contact the ground at a roll angle between 7.45 and 8.7 degrees.
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's misjudgment of the remedial action necessary to correct the aircraft's misalignment with the runway. The dark night conditions, fog, and the pilot-in-command's failure to maintain proper alignment with the runway were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96IA027
- Event ID
- 20001207X05080
- Case number
- SEA96IA027
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-12-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 51e4251100ab22d019517a957458507613f80f3f8cba2d3260ffca1cc98710b2; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:55:55.372Z.