United Express Flight 7627
Embraer 170 · Accident: abrupt maneuver on approach
From Montreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL) to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06LA002
- 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
- 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
Embraer 170
- Aircraft type
- Embraer 170
- 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
- N650RW
- Operator
- United Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL), MontrealTo Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), Dulles, VA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
- Flightcrew › Maneuver, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the airplane approached the destination airport in level flight at 3,000 feet, air traffic control issued a traffic advisory and a turn away from approaching traffic, which was 500 feet below. About the same time, the airplane's traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) alerted the crew to the traffic, and issued a resolution advisory (RA) to climb the airplane. The first officer climbed the airplane to 3,500 feet, and then descended the airplane back to 3,000 feet once the RA was complied with. During the climb and subsequent descent maneuver, a cabin attendant sustained a serious injury. Data downloaded from the flight data recorder (FDR) revealed that the flight crew responded with a pitch-up attitude of 14 degrees, with a sustained g-load of 2 g's. According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Advisory Circular 120-55b, the recommended initial response was no greater than 7 degrees vertical pitch, with a resultant g-load of approximately 0.35 g's. It further advised, "The [pilot not flying] should advise the [pilot flying] on the progress of achieving the vertical rates commanded by TCAS." The manufacturer's airplane operator's manual stated that compliance with pitch guidance provided on the primary flight display should require no more than a 0.75g to 1.25g maneuver (+-0.25g).
Probable cause
The flight crew's excessive maneuver in response to a traffic alert during the landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06LA002
- Event ID
- 20051026X01739
- Case number
- NYC06LA002
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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, coordinates, 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: ce1a0d89b437c5ac97e94bbbcf847b36ba8978f2fa2e99489808c03efbd79fbd; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:58:37.146Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N650RW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.