Omni Air International Boeing 767 36N accident
Boeing 767 36N · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From Bucharest to Kabul International Airport (OAKB)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA14FA122
- 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
- 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
Boeing 767 36N
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N768NA
- Operator
- Omni Air International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BucharestTo Kabul International Airport (OAKB), Kabul
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 1999)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Tailstrike
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight experienced a tailstrike on landing resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and aft pressure bulkhead. There were no injuries to the passengers; however, four of the 16 crewmembers received minor injuries.
According to the flight crew statements and recorder data, the landing reference speed for the approach was 145 knots. Due to the weather conditions, the flight crew added 10 knots to this for their approach speed due to the gusty weather conditions and conducted a visual approach using the visual approach slope indicator as guidance. As a result of the weather and gusty winds, airspeed fluctuated during the approach between 162 knots and 138 knots and engine thrust varied accordingly between about 86% N1 and 40% N1 on approach.
The captain stated that the flight was on speed and glide path at 500 feet above the ground but at about 200 feet above the ground, the flight started to move above the glide path and airspeed started to increase. To compensate, the captain reduced engine power and then heard a "sink rate" aural alert when passing through about 50 feet. Flight recorder data indicated the engine N1 decreased to 40%, with throttles at forward idle position, at about 110 feet above the ground, and remained there until after touchdown. The airplane touched down at 140 knots and a nose up pitch attitude of 8.9 °, increasing to 9.5° immediately after touchdown.
Guidance included in the operator's training manuals indicated that normal touchdown attitude should be between 4 and 6 degrees nose up. Additionally, guidance indicated that thrust should be managed on approach to maintain reference speed, plus any wind additive, until the beginning of the flare. After reaching the flare, thrust levers should be retarded smoothly to idle with main gear touchdown ideally occurring simultaneously with thrust levers reaching idle.
An analysis of calculated vertical and horizontal wind effect indicated an existing updraft transitioned to a downdraft and a headwind component transitioned to a tailwind component during the last 5 seconds prior to touchdown.
Probable cause
the early reduction of engine thrust that resulted in an excessive sink rate and nose high pitch attitude during the landing flare.
Contributing to the accident was a significant change in the vertical and horizontal wind components just prior to touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA14FA122
- Event ID
- 20140620X45424
- Case number
- DCA14FA122
- 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, coordinates. 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: 03c845d97e941c222f7e3402b22a66ca5ddf9ece478b2e95f96038e7d51bed38; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:24:30.876Z.