United Airlines Flight 2327
Boeing 737-522 · Incident on approach
From San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to Ontario International Airport (ONT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97IA243
- 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 737-522
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N956UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Francisco International Airport (SFO), San Francisco, CATo Ontario International Airport (ONT)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Light condition › Other
- Unknown › Miscellaneous, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was descending on radar vectors for the final approach course when the crew noticed a red laser beam that swept across the cockpit several times. A few seconds later, the laser encounter reoccurred. The aircraft was several miles from the approach end of the runway when the crew saw the laser emanating from a point on the ground north of their position. The crew notified air traffic control of the incident. There was no injury to anyone onboard the aircraft. Investigators from the FDA, the FBI, as well as airborne law enforcement personnel were notified; however, the source of the light remains undetermined. There were no NOTAMs in effect for laser light activity in the area at the time of the incident.
Probable cause
a laser light source of undetermined origin directed toward the cockpit window of an aircraft in-flight by a person or persons unknown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97IA243
- Event ID
- 20001208X08416
- Case number
- LAX97IA243
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-07-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fa7570c324a9c79d8ee96b807e963692a7e3faccff8105145d3d4e87a0c84d4d; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:28:37.764Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N956UA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.