Kalitta Air Boeing 747-4B5F accident
Boeing 747-4B5F · Accident: aircraft structural failure during landing
From Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCEL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA22LA038
- 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
- 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
- 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 747-4B5F
- 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
- N705CK
- Operator
- Kalitta Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport (SCEL), SantiagoTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2001)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
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 crew reported that upon arrival at KMIA, another flight reported seeing something fly off their airplane. Post-flight inspection revealed damage to the right-hand inboard flaps, fuselage and right horizontal stabilizer. Upon lowering flaps, a section of the trailing edge flap was also missing. Examination of the damaged components revealed that the right inboard foreflap fitting assembly had not been lubricated in accordance with a manufacturer’s service bulletin.
Probable cause
Incorrect lubrication of the foreflap fitting assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA22LA038
- Event ID
- 20211206104355
- Case number
- DCA22LA038
- 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, cause areas. 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: 64d3561292fdba23fd04aa23b72b2d9702bb823d8bb92ebcdca4ee02501f2c48; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:48:27.572Z.