OPS12IA122 · Unknown aircraft
Incident: near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation on approach
From an unrecorded airport to Kahului International Airport (PHOG)
Event
- NTSB case
- OPS12IA122
- 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
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Unknown aircraft
- 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
- Unknown
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Kahului International Airport (PHOG), Kahului, HI
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Three aircraft were approaching Kahului Airport to land on runway 2 and were receiving air traffic control sequencing and separation services from the Honolulu Control Facility (HCF). Aircraft 1 was conducting an instrument approach from the northeast and conflicted with aircraft 2, which was conducting a visual approach from the southwest. The controller attempted to correct the situation by vectoring aircraft 1, even though it was below the minimum vectoring altitude for the area. Aircraft 2 continued the approach and landed. The controller re-sequenced aircraft 1 for another instrument approach in front of aircraft 3, which was arriving from the northeast. Aircraft 3 was faster than aircraft 1 and overtook aircraft 1 while both aircraft were on final approach to the runway. The controller did not intervene in time to ensure separation.
Review of HCF training materials and procedures showed that the simulator problems given to controllers to familiarize them with the new approach at that airport were not realistic and did not properly prepare controllers to manage the approach procedure.
Probable cause
Failure of the Honolulu Control Facility controller to issue control instructions necessary to establish and maintain required separation between all three aircraft. Contributing to the losses of separation was inadequate training provided to controllers about the use of the approach to runway 2 at Kahului.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record OPS12IA122
- Event ID
- 20111121X93251
- Case number
- OPS12IA122
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 124505a00642505b03e3c0ac04fb3814bdb1290de7b27ca39d80a9c5405a2a0d; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:57:09.652Z.