Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 228
McDonnell Douglas DC-8-71F · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY) to Nashville International Airport (BNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01IA129
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-8-71F
- 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
- N8076U
- Operator
- Emery Worldwide Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY), Dayton, OHTo Nashville International Airport (BNA), Nashville, TN
- 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
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, improper
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Incorrect
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the freighter flight was normal in all aspects until the landing gear were extended for landing at destination. The left main landing gear, (LMLG) indicated "unsafe", and all attempts, using the emergency/abnormal checklists and telephone/radio-relayed communications with company maintenance, failed to extend it. An emergency, LMLG retracted landing was performed with minimal damage to the aircraft. Postcrash investigation revealed that company maintenance installed a one-way check valve in the LMLG extend hydraulic lines instead of a restricted flow valve. The wrongly installed valve had no factory specification or part number attached, and the tag reportedly removed from it at installation possessed the wrong factory specification number, and the correct vendor' s part number. The company maintenance manual states that upon completion of the valve installation, a leak and operational test of the MLG retract/extension system be performed. The valve installation mechanic and the company inspector both stated that the finished job was leak and "ops" tested.
Probable cause
The failure of company maintenance personnel to install the correct hydraulic landing gear extension component, and the failure of company maintenance inspection personnel to comply with proper post maintenance test procedures, resulting in the impossibility of the LMLG to extend, and the subsequent LMLG up landing. A factor in the accident was the improper identification tag marking on the replacement component, and no marking on the component, itself.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01IA129
- Event ID
- 20010502X00851
- Case number
- MIA01IA129
- 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: f77789b57cb8153a675279c229c0562f07eed64090e24137df3e2af783e0a386; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:14:28.428Z.