Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 26
McDonnell Douglas DC-8-63F · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY) to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98IA141
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
McDonnell Douglas DC-8-63F
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-8
- 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
- N921R
- Operator
- Emery Worldwide Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY), Dayton, OHTo Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
- 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
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Missed approach, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was cleared for an instrument landing system (ILS) approach. The ceiling was 200 feet overcast, visibility was 1 mile (runway visual range was greater than 6,000 feet) and the first officer was the pilot flying (according to company operating procedures, the minimum ceiling for first officer flying is normally 500 feet.) Air traffic control (ATC) radar indicated that the aircraft was left of the localizer course and/or below glide path, outside of the company's stabilized approach limits, for the majority of the final approach segment below 1,000 feet above touchdown. The aircraft broke out approximately at minimums (200 feet above touchdown), left of (and diverging away from) the runway centerline. The captain called, "push it down, push it down, push it down", and asked, "you got it or you want me to get it?". The first officer replied, "I can get it", and the captain said, "OK." The aircraft pitched down and banked up to approximately 14 degrees in correcting back to the runway. A high sink rate existed in the last few seconds before touchdown; the flight data recorder registered a vertical acceleration of about 1.8 G at touchdown. The aircraft's number 1 main landing gear wheel separated from the aircraft at or shortly after touchdown. The separated wheel entered the airport ramp area and struck two parked trucks and a baggage cart in front of the main passenger terminal. Post-incident examinations of the aircraft's number 1 wheel retaining nut disclosed that the nut threads were worn approximately 0.030 inch beyond engineering drawing specifications. FAA guidance directs FAA principal operations inspectors (POIs) to ensure their operators' operations manuals contain stabilized approach criteria as well as required actions in the event of deviations ("i.e. missed approach or go/around [sic]"). The company's DC-8 operations manual states only that deviations from the stabilized approach profile "are cause for consideration to abandon the approach."
Probable cause
The flight crew's failure to perform a missed approach upon failing to attain and/or maintain proper course/runway alignment and glidepath on final approach, resulting in a high-sink-rate landing and subsequent separation of a main landing gear wheel from the aircraft. Factors contributing to the incident included: low ceiling; the first officer's failure to attain and/or maintain proper course/runway alignment and glidepath on approach; insufficiently defined company procedures for responding to deviations from a stabilized approach profile; inadequate FAA principal operations inspector approval of company operating procedures; and a worn main landing gear wheel retaining nut.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98IA141
- Event ID
- 20001211X10696
- Case number
- SEA98IA141
- 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: 36164fffdaa779fad1c18190b3a6c15e07bce4d42b22f753e51dcd415c0e0e84; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:06:57.603Z.