DCA13WA012 · Boeing 737 838
Qantas Airways Boeing 737 838 · Incident
From Adelaide International Airport (YPAD) to Canberra Airport (YSCB)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA13WA012
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Boeing 737 838
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- VH-VXB
- Operator
- Qantas Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Adelaide International Airport (YPAD), AdelaideTo Canberra Airport (YSCB), Canberra
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Canberra, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On October 17, 2012, about 2045 local time, a Boeing 737-838, registration VH-VXB, descended below the assigned altitude and below the minimum safe altitude for the area of operation. Air traffic control received a minimum safe altitude warning.
The incident is being investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
Inquiries regarding this incident should be directed to:
Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) P.O. Box 967, Civic Square Canberra A.C.T. 2608 Australia
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA13WA012
- Event ID
- 20121026X95043
- Case number
- DCA13WA012
- 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: 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: 815c00f4de13ea55fb24c80ed98c5e12e09ad5f4b17ff651045f9c83d4d2f1b1; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:17:27.444Z.