Northwest Airlines Flight 395
Airbus Industrie A-320 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96IA207
- 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
Airbus Industrie A-320
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-320
- 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
- N347NW
- Operator
- Northwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS)To Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW), Detroit, MI
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, fly-by-wire › Malfunction
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Boston, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that a two to three degree uncommanded pitch decrease occurred about 600 feet above ground level at the same time as a flight control system pitch warning fault message was received. The crew declared an emergency and landed without further incident. During troubleshooting, the maintenance technician reported the right half of the stabilizer trim control package felt hot to the touch. The left side was cool. The trimmable horizontal stabilizer (THS) actuator was replaced, and the airplane was returned to service without further incident. Examination of the airplane logbooks revealed flight control system, pitch axis, discrepancies, and maintenance action following the previous two flights. Both elevator aileron computers, the THS electronic module, the THS actuator position monitor, and the pitch trim motor were replaced. Examination of the flight data recorder revealed erratic stabilizer movement on the previous two flights. The THS actuator and the pitch trim actuator servo motor functioned normally when tested. A defective diode was discovered in the electronic module. An Airbus Industries engineer reported the pitch oscillations could not be attributed to the defective diode.
Probable cause
an undetermined intermittent fault in the trimmable horizontal stabilizer actuator system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96IA207
- Event ID
- 20001208X05916
- Case number
- CHI96IA207
- 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: 0b046df86f9fb45ba96221d4c2f7b6494fc119461ba5f779656a67a80296f58d; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:49:44.186Z.