Garuda Indonesian Airways PT Flight 800
McDonnell Douglas MD-11 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From WRRR · Jakarta to KHNL · Honolulu, HI
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA97MA053
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-11
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-11
- 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
- EICDK
- Operator
- Garuda Indonesian Airways PT
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WRRR · JakartaTo KHNL · Honolulu, HI
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Throttle/power control › Improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an autopilot autoland approach and landing, the captain disconnected the autopilot at touchdown. Manual flight control inputs were not sufficient to maintain runway heading and prevent pitch up upon spoiler deployment. Reverse thrust was selected and then go-around thrust was applied. During the go-around, 3 engine thrust was not symmetrical. The airplane was overrotated and a tail strike occurred.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to apply adequate manual control inputs following his decision to disconnect the autopilot during the autoland operation, resulting in a subsequent loss of directional control. Also causal and contributing to the tail strike was the pilot's improper decision to initiate a go-around during reverse thrust engine operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA97MA053
- Event ID
- 20001208X08104
- Case number
- DCA97MA053
- 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: 96e917eac0e798b8fa2397012a74f7d307b581772dd5bbe483f8c570069e4f39; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:30:22.709Z.