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Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 777 300 incident

28 Apr 2013 · Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia

Boeing 777 300 · Incident

From King Abdulaziz International Airport (JED) to King Khalid International Airport (RUH)

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Event

NTSB case
ENG13WA024
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
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
Airline
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 777 300

Aircraft type
Boeing 777
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
HZ-AK16
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From King Abdulaziz International Airport (JED), Jeddah, Saudi ArabiaTo King Khalid International Airport (RUH), Riyadh
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
Non-U.S., Commercial
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
Minor

Cause areas

No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.

Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Jeddah, the place the record names. Not the accident site.

NTSB narrative

On April 28, 2013 a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 777-300, HZ-AK16, equipped with two General Electric GE90-115B engines had been pushed back from the gate and was in the process of starting the No. 2 engine when the engine unexpectedly accelerated to a high power setting. The aircraft moved forward and could not be stopped with the brakes before it hit a parked push back tractor severely damaging the lower No. 2 engine nose cowl.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) is investigating the incident. As the state of manufacture of the engines and some airplane components, the NTSB has designated a United States Accredited Representative under the provisions of Annex 13 to the Convention of Civil Aviation to assist the GACA in the investigation.

All inquiries concerning this incident should be directed to the GACA at:

General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) Safety Department GACA – Safety & Economic Regulations P.O. Box 887 Jeddah 21241 Saudi Arabia

Tel.: (966) 2 685-5515 / 5494 (966) 5 04626707 / 48695853 (mobile) E-mail:sd@gaca.gov.sa Fax: (966) 2 685-5507 Website:www.gaca.gov.sa

Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ENG13WA024
Event ID
20130507X80356
Case number
ENG13WA024
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.
  • No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
  • The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 1e122181f8dc54a6d192eff7ac72922b899687d7f804bcff6c742428d3d2093e; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:27:18.667Z.