Northwest Airline Boeing 757-251 incident
Boeing 757-251 · Incident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI86IA115
- 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 757-251
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N508US
- Operator
- Northwest Airline
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Francisco International Airport (SFO), San Francisco, CATo not recorded
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate handling/perf capabilities
- Manufacturer › Information insufficient
- Pilot in command › Brakes(normal), not used
- Pilot in command › Flare, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
N508US WAS OPERATING AS NWA FLT 150. THE CAPTAIN STATED AFTER THE INCIDENT THAT THE FLT WAS UNEVENTFUL UNTIL LANDING. UPON LANDING AND SPOILER DEPLOYMENT, THE ACFT PITCHED UP ABRUPTLY, TO AN ATTITUDE OF 10 DEGREES. THE LANDING WAS COMPLETED WITHOUT INCIDENT. EXAMINATION OF THE ACFT REVEALED DAMAGE TO THE ACFT FUSELAGE BELLY. BOEING ISSUED A SERVICE BULLETIN STATING THAT SPOILER DEPLOYMENT ON TOUCHDOWN WOULD PRODUCE A NOSE UP AERODYNAMIC MOMENT. SOLUTIONS TO THIS OCCURRENCE IS A MODIFICATION TO THE SPOILER DEPLOYMENT AND USE OF AUTO BRAKING DURING LANDING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI86IA115
- Event ID
- 20001213X33243
- Case number
- CHI86IA115
- 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: c4e96c4a926d56d9b93f0b00ffe034f1dc52ea54073a5a4344dbc99178686568; retrieved 2026-09-18T20:02:06.613Z.