ValuJet Douglas DC-9-32 accident
Douglas DC-9-32 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Nashville International Airport (BNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96FA059
- 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
- Accident
- 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
Douglas DC-9-32
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N922VV
- Operator
- ValuJet
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo Nashville International Airport (BNA)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Circuit breaker, selected
- Flightcrew › Planning/decision, improper
- Flightcrew › Spoiler extension, inadvertent activation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, pilots (plts) had difficulty retracting landing gear (LG), & manually bypassed LG anti-retraction system to retract gear. While climbing, they realized cabin pressurization (CP) & takeoff warning (TW) systems were still in ground mode. (There was evidence nosegear shock strut was underserviced/underinflated for cold/winter weather operation; & strut did not extended sufficiently to actuate ground shift mechanism, to release landing gear lever anti-retraction mechanism, & to shift aircraft (acft) systems to flight mode.) Using quick reference handbook (QRH) procedures, plts pulled Ground Control Relay circuit breakers (C/Bs), then noted CP & TW began operating in flight (flt) mode. En route, the flt was uneventful. Plts decided to reset C/Bs just before touchdown. They made a normal approach to runway, & on short final approach, Captain reset C/Bs. At that time, ground spoilers activated, & acft descended rapidly, striking ground tail first in runway approach light area. Abnormal procedure in QRH stated 'GROUND CONTROL RELAY C/Bs (if pulled) . . . RESET . . . .' This was listed in 'Approach and Landing' section of procedure. Acft operating manual (AOM) stated 'Reset Ground Control Relay circuit breakers during taxi . . . .' Plts stated they had not referenced AOM, nor did they notify company of in-flight irregularity. (See: NTSB/AAR-96/07 for detailed info)
Probable cause
the flight crew's improper procedures and actions (failing to contact system operations/dispatch, failing to use all available aircraft and company manuals, and prematurely resetting the ground control relay circuit breakers) in response to an in-flight abnormality, which resulted in the inadvertent in-flight activation of the ground spoilers during the approach to landing and the airplane's subsequent descent rate and excessively hard ground impact in the runway approach light area. Contributing factors in the accident were ValuJet's failure to incorporate cold weather nosegear servicing procedures in its operations and maintenance manuals, the incomplete procedural guidance contained in the ValuJet quick reference handbook, and the flight crew's inadequate knowledge and understanding of the aircraft systems.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96FA059
- Event ID
- 20001208X05167
- Case number
- MIA96FA059
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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. 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: f4781f28abb99a52031369a5bd24c7b487622a3f81daa0c5c321bd6d620bc546; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:54:46.850Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: operator. The NTSB narrative names the operator: "Contributing factors in the accident were ValuJet's failure to incorporate cold weather nosegear servicing procedures in its operations and maintenance manuals"