Atlantic Coast Airlines (aca) Fairchild Dornier DO-328-300 incident
Fairchild Dornier DO-328-300 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) to LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD02IA046
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Fairchild Dornier DO-328-300
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild Dornier DO-328
- 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
- N429FJ
- Operator
- Atlantic Coast Airlines (aca)
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NCTo LaGuardia Airport (LGA), LAGUARDIA, NY
- 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 · descent
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew experienced a strong odor and smoke in the cockpit, followed by a loss of flight displays during flight in instrument meteorological conditions. The captain declared an emergency, and the first officer flew the airplane referencing the stand-by instruments. Shortly after declaring the emergency, the crew made a right 360 degree turn to avoid severe weather. However, near the completion of the turn, the crew entered VIP 4 and 5 intensity level weather, and reported moderate to severe turbulence. The airplane was then vectored to an airport east of the severe weather, executed an instrument approach and landed without incident. While on approach, the crew reported that all flight displays had returned back to normal. Twenty-seven days later, another crew, who were flying the same airplane, also experienced a loss of flight displays. Approximately 2 minutes after the failure, the displays returned to normal and the flight landed without incident at its intended destination. Examination of electrical components revealed no discrepancies. In addition, the manufacturer reviewed the design of the electrical system and could not identify a design failure.
Probable cause
The partial loss of flight display information for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD02IA046
- Event ID
- 20020607X00834
- Case number
- IAD02IA046
- 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, damage. 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: 61fe132e31278f04a723cf279c6b8dcc9a16135bfad5b3564254cc76ba5712eb; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:03:12.977Z.