Kalitta Air Flight 368
Boeing 747 412 · Accident: ground collision during takeoff
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA20CA077
- 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 747 412
- 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
- N703CK
- Operator
- Kalitta Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, 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
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected 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
- Ground collision
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On February 3, 2020, about 0306 Pacific standard time, Kalitta Air flight 368, a Boeing 747-400, N703CK, collided with a garbage bin during the takeoff roll on runway 25R at Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX), Los Angeles, California. There were no injuries to the seven passengers and flight crew onboard and the airplane was substantially damaged. The domestic cargo flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 supplemental from KLAX to Honolulu International Airport (PHNL), Honolulu, Hawaii. The captain stated that he was the pilot flying and, during the takeoff roll on runway 25R, between 80 and 110 knots (V1 was 131 knots), he noticed a large object "moving right to left at a good speed". A fraction of a second later it passed under the nose and impacted the airplane. He said that the impact was loud, and the airplane "settled", followed by severe vibration in the airplane. He immediately rejected the takeoff and stopped on the runway. At the time of the takeoff, winds were reported to be 15 knots, gusting to 28 knots, from 340 degrees. Authorities at the Los Angeles World Airports determined that the object blown onto the runway was a garbage dumpster.
Probable cause
An unavoidable collision with a garbage dumpster that had blown into the path of the airplane during the takeoff roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA20CA077
- Event ID
- 20200211X10757
- Case number
- DCA20CA077
- 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: 3d16652792da4658e443a23c3956ca97ce28c8163fc56a860d378ad32ca6bb09; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:05:51.052Z.