Arrow Airways Boeing 707-300 accident
Boeing 707-300 · Accident: decompression en route
From C · Miami, FL to C · DOMINICAN REPUB
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA83FA027
- 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
- 1 · 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 707-300
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 707
- 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
- N707GB
- Operator
- Arrow Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C · Miami, FLTo C · DOMINICAN REPUB
- 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
- Decompression
- 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
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Fluctuating
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Miami, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DURING CLIMBOUT FROM MIAMI, A CABIN PRESSURIZATION PROBLEM WAS ENCOUNTERED. ALL CREW MEMBERS DONNED THEIR OXYGEN MASKS & THE CABIN ALTITUDE STABILIZED AT 20,000 FT AS THE ACFT WAS LEVELED AT 33,000 FT. ABOUT 40 MINUTES FROM DESTINATION THE FLIGHT ENGINEER TRAINEE/OBSERVER QUERIED THE FIRST OFFICER AS TO HOW MUCH LONGER THE FLIGHT WOULD TAKE. MOMENTS LATER THE TRAINEE STARTED TO SLUMP DOWN. THE FLIGHT ENGINEER TRADED MASKS WITH HIM AND VERIFIED THAT THE OXYGEN SUPPLY WAS NORMAL. AN EMERGENCY DESCENT WAS MADE TO 6,000 FT WHILE FIRST AID WAS ADMINISTERED. AN AMBULANCE MET THE FLIGHT AT THE DESTINATION & TRANSPORTED THE TRAINEE TO A HOSPITAL WHERE HE EXPIRED LATER IN THE DAY. CAUSE OF DEATH WAS LATER DIAGNOSED AS AEROEMBOLISM (BY EXCLUSION). THE TRAINEE HAD A CLINICAL HISTORY OF SEIZURES & LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS FOLLOWING DECOMPRESSION. THE PRESSURIZATION PROBLEM WAS REPORTEDLY RELATED TO A STUCK OUTFLOW VALVE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA83FA027
- Event ID
- 20020917X04908
- Case number
- MIA83FA027
- 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: b30223b8915a10c820f9206e040b9acc1eb69db8348ca17567cc1c769ae12f43; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:31:57.749Z.