Lufthansa Airbus Industrie A-340-200 accident
Airbus Industrie A-340-200 · Accident: abrupt maneuver en route
From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA269
- 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
Airbus Industrie A-340-200
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-340
- 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
- DAIBE
- Operator
- Lufthansa
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)To George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), Houston, TX
- 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 129: Foreign
- 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 · climb to 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
- Flightcrew › Evasive maneuver, performed
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
During climb, the TCAS accrued a TA then a RA down advisory 'don't climb greater than 500 fpm.' The crew simultaneously operated their respective side stick controls when the captain responded with an abrupt maneuver without making a verbal announcement that he was taking command. Input from both side sticks changed the aircraft nose-up pitch from 0.7 degrees to 4.22 degrees in 1.1 second and an aft galley g load from -0.36 g's to 2.27 g's. Subsequently, the Captain Side Stick Position gave an aircraft pitch change to 2.11 degrees nose-down and an aft galley CG of -0.76 g's in a span of one second. Both Side Stick positions cumulatively gave 1.8 degrees nose-up and 2.09 g's at the aft galley in 1.2 seconds. The VFR traffic had visual contact on the Airbus and both aircraft were advised by ATC that the traffic was not a factor. The seat belt sign had been turned 'OFF' and the FA's were preparing for passenger service. FA's reported strong consecutive jolts, without warning, that threw them and items against the ceiling. The captain had the TCAS CBT training. He had not received the simulator TCAS training. The Captain had not participated in CRM.
Probable cause
The flightcrew's abrupt maneuver/descent in response to a TCAS RA. Factors were the company assignment of the captain to the crew position with a lack of captain training.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA269
- Event ID
- 20001208X05986
- Case number
- FTW96LA269
- 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, 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: 7f91f5574ee70daa506963797df1f03a0f096d64603c8fa26d5d1efa0775baba; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:49:30.938Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for DAIBE; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.