Gemini Air Cargo Flight GCO7580
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30F · Accident: near collision between aircraft en route
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to Nadi International Airport (NFFN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00FA041
- 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 DC-10-30F
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-10
- 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
- N602GC
- Operator
- Gemini Air Cargo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HITo Nadi International Airport (NFFN), NANDI FIJI
- 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
- 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
- Near collision between aircraft
- 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 › Evasive maneuver, initiated
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Honolulu, HI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The DC-10 captain, in response to a Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) alert, made an aggressive pitch change and felt a slight buffet as the airplane decelerated. The maneuver resulted in wrinkling of the elevator skins. Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructed a DC-9 crew to maintain visual separation and the DC-9 crew accepted the instruction. The airplanes were about 7 miles from each other in night conditions on converging courses; the DC-9 was descending out of 5,000 feet and the DC-10 was climbing through 3,800 feet. The controller had to repeat instructions to the DC-10 crew, as well as other crews. One crew informed ATC that their radio transmissions were weak. Douglas Flight Operation Letter AOL, C1-E60-HHK-L033 dated January 21, 1988, explained probable resultant damage to aircraft components when speed was reduced to buffet speeds indicated on the Cruise Buffet Onset Boundary Chart as presented in the DC-10 Aircraft Flight Manual. It noted that in some cases this buffeting resulted in wrinkled outboard elevator skins. It emphasized that speed reduction down to or near the clean configuration stalling speed greatly increased the chance of experiencing elevator damage.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command initiated an evasive manuver during a near midair collission. The airplane entered a prestall buffet, which resulted in buckling of the elevator skins.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00FA041
- Event ID
- 20001212X20116
- Case number
- LAX00FA041
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-11-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5185be73c823e6b607417cea512dd61a3e614c6bbfe67ef527f0c202504857d2; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:51:29.397Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N602GC; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, G6OA.