Millon Air Boeing 707-323C incident
Boeing 707-323C · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Eduardo Gomes International Airport (SBEG) to Miami International Airport (MIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96IA084
- 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 707-323C
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 707
- 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
- N751MA
- Operator
- Millon Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eduardo Gomes International Airport (SBEG), ManausTo Miami International Airport (MIA)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Flight engineer › Emergency procedure, not followed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Miami, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
One hour after departure, the aircraft lost all hydraulic fluid from the utility hydraulic system. On approach to Miami, the flight engineer manually extended the main landing gear. Attempts to manually lower the nose landing gear were unsuccessful. A fly-by of the tower indicated the nose gear doors were open and the gear was retracted. The aircraft was landed in this configuration. After the incident, the aircraft was raised, and the nose landing gear was extended using the normal manual extension system. After the aircraft was taken to a hangar, the nose landing gear was retracted and manually extended 4 more times with no evidence of failure or malfunction. The utility hydraulic system relief valve housing failed due to fatigue cracking, resulting in the loss of all hydraulic fluid. The flight engineer had been flying for 21 days as a flight engineer at the operator and had accumulated 25 flight hours. He reported he had 54 total flight hours as flight engineer in the Boeing 707 and 3,800 flight hours as flight engineer in the Douglas DC-8.
Probable cause
failure of the flight engineer to follow the appropriate emergency procedure to manually extend the nose landing gear. Factors relating to the incident were: fatigue failure of the utility hydraulic system relief valve, which resulted in an inoperative normal gear extension system; the flight engineer's lack of total time in the incident aircraft; and inadequate training given by the aircraft operator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96IA084
- Event ID
- 20001208X05294
- Case number
- MIA96IA084
- 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. 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: 0aaafd2a6ba15e20f1cb6b01bd5db24f52cc0f757c21d9d0d55bacfa00c0702f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:53:13.427Z.