USAirways Airbus Industrie A319-132 incident
Airbus Industrie A319-132 and Boeing 747 400 · Incident: air traffic event on approach
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- OPS10IA196
- 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
Aircraft 1 · Airbus Industrie A319-132
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A319
- 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
- N810AW
- Operator
- USAirways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix Sky Har, AZTo Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC), Anchorage, AK
- 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 crosswind
- Defining eventThe 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
- Air traffic event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Aircraft 2 · Boeing 747 400
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- LXTCV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC), Anchorage, AKTo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago O'Hare, IL
- 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 129: Foreign
- 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
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe 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
- Air traffic event
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Anchorage, AK, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airport was configured to use runways 14 and runway 25R, which intersect. An Airbus A319 had been cleared for a visual approach to land on runway 14 but executed a missed approach. During the missed approach procedure and follow-on instructions by air traffic control, the flight paths of the A319 and a Boeing 747, departing from runway 25R, converged. The crew of the A319 received a traffic collision avoidance system resolution advisory during the incident. According to radar data, the A319 and the 747 came with 100 feet vertically and .33 miles laterally.
Postincident investigation determined that the approach controller did not direct a timely transfer of communications on the A319 to the control tower and did not account for the aircraft's speed when he directed the A319 to turn north. The above average approach speed of the A319 resulted in the airplane overflying runway 25R instead of turning inside the runway. Additionally, the crew of the 747 transferred radio communications to departure control prior to being directed to do so by the control tower, resulting in the 747 not receiving time-critical traffic and control information from the tower controller.
Probable cause
The approach controller's delayed transfer of communications on the A319 to the tower controller and failure to account for the aircraft's speed when he directed the crew to turn north. Contributing to the incident was the 747 crew's transfer of radio communications to departure control prior to being directed to do so by the tower controller.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record OPS10IA196
- Event ID
- 20100525X02508
- Case number
- OPS10IA196
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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, 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: 9489bf7385163f0315bdf50bee0aefa75caf4d016327dfd2029dbc989ec62553; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:16:32.227Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Typo in city name; airport code PHX is Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.