SEA07TA181 · McDonnell Douglas DC 10-10
California Dept of Forestry and Fire Protection McDonnell Douglas DC 10-10 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Southern California Logistics Airport (VCV) to Tehachapi, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07TA181
- 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
- Government
- 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 10-10
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-10
- 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
- N450AX
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southern California Logistics Airport (VCV), SoCal Logistics, CATo Tehachapi, CA
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The transport category airplane had been modified as a firefighting air tanker and was contracted to the State of California under an exclusive-use contract for the fire season. This was the second fire season for the operator, flight crew, and accident airplane. In order to facilitate the availability of the accident airplane, the contracting agency increased the personnel assigned to the program. Normal operational procedures required that a lead airplane fly the intended flight profile prior to the air tanker. The air tanker crew typically views the flight profile flown by the lead airplane, and then flies the profile while following the lead airplane. The lead airplane points out obstacles and general concerns along the flight path to the air tanker during that first flight. On the accident run, the original lead airplane with a pilot specifically trained for the DC-10 fire retardant drop procedures had switched out with a backup lead airplane and pilot in order to return to base for refueling purposes. The backup lead airplane flew the flight profile prior to the accident airplane joining the flight profile for the fire retardant drop. As the captain flew the profile, the accident airplane flew at a lower altitude than the lead airplane, entered a left turn, and impacted multiple trees with the left wing. The digital flight data recorder indicated that the airplane had entered a 35-degree left bank with a vertical acceleration from 0.8 to 1.4 G's, which is consistent with normal loading in a banked turn. Although the flight crew was experienced with the operation of the accident airplane, they had limited fire suppression experience. The operator provided training on the airplane and training in operating in the fire environment. The flight crew obtained the majority of their retardant drop experience (in excess of 100 hours using water for drops) during the certification testing for the airplane.
Probable cause
The captain's failure to maintain clearance from trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07TA181
- Event ID
- 20070703X00873
- Case number
- SEA07TA181
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-06-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3119b775af82ad6c66255bc802e192c56e11df425474db5f12649bd43b854e35; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:14:01.529Z.