Aia Flight 903
Boeing 747-269B · Incident: hard landing
From Miami International Airport (MIA) to Eduardo Gomes International Airport (SBEG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97IA096
- 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 747-269B
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- N707CK
- Operator
- Aia
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami International Airport (MIA), Miami, FLTo Eduardo Gomes International Airport (SBEG)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, improper
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The flightcrew reported that the landing was into the early morning sun approximately 30 minutes after local sunrise. They reported that the glare from the sun was intense and the flying pilot installed his windshield sun shade at the other marker. They said that the 1,000 foot and 500 foot call outs were made with confirmation of the runway in sight. The flying pilot continued to fly on instruments to decision height. They said that at approximately 1,000 feet the glare increased with low haze and the forward visibility decreased. The flying pilot considered the airplane to be in the correct attitude for landing; however, the non-flying (PIC) took control prior to touchdown and flared the airplane when he saw no apparent flare. The airplane then touched down hard. A readout of the Flight Data Recorder revealed touchdown produced 2.77 'G.' The data indicated that the sink rate increased when the non-flying pilot moved the control column aft in an attempt to flare the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot-in-command's (non-flying pilot) improper flare. Related factors were inadequate crew/coordination, haze and sunglare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97IA096
- Event ID
- 20001208X07499
- Case number
- CHI97IA096
- 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: a0814b5f80628c0a17cfa68eecc61c9824dc5992b2593ff1e3c73d967678e61c; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:40:39.934Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N707CK; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.