Air New Zealand Boeing 747 incident
Boeing 747 · Incident: near collision between aircraft en route
From Fa'a'ā International Airport (NTAA) to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX89IA184
- 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
- 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
- ZKNZX
- Operator
- Air New Zealand
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fa'a'ā International Airport (NTAA), PAPEETE,TAHITITo Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CA
- 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
- En route · 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
- None
Cause areas
- Pilot of other aircraft › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AIR NEW ZEALAND FLT 6 (BOEING B-747, ZK-NZX) WAS INBOUND TO LOS ANEGLES. IT WAS CLEARED TO DESCEND TO 7000 FT ABOUT 26 MI SOUTH OF THE SEAL BEACH VOR. COAST TRACON WAS TRACKING THE 747 & ANOTHER MODE C TARGET, BUT WAS NOT IN RADIO CONTACT WITH THE 2ND (UNKNOWN) ACFT. ATC ISSUED TRAFFIC ADVISORIES TO THE 747 AS THE 2ND ACFT CLOSED ON A HEAD-ON COURSE. THE 747 CREW MADE AN ABRUPT DESCENDING LEFT TURN TO AVOID THE OTHER ACFT, WHICH WAS CONVERVING AT THE SAME ALTITUDE & PASSED WITH APRX 100 METERS HORIZONTAL DISTANCE. THE OTHER ACFT WAS RPRTD TO BE A SMALL TWIN ENG AIRPLANE. TWO FLT ATTENDANTS & ONE PSGR RECEIVED MINOR INJURIES. THE AREA & ALTITUDE WERE IN UNCONTROLLED AIRSPACE.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE VISUAL LOOK-OUT BY THE PILOT OF THE OTHER (SMALL TWIN ENGINE) AIRCRAFT. A FACTOR RELATED TO THE INCIDENT WAS: A DELAY OF THE 747 CREW TO SEE-AND-AVOID THE OTHER AIRCRAFT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX89IA184
- Event ID
- 20001213X28339
- Case number
- LAX89IA184
- 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: 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 1989-05-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2b9254eaf0c70b710d2e80b6978e2ab5aa1baab782b7c1c0f626dee8c2cc679e; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:11:57.915Z.