United Airlines Flight 2860
Douglas DC-8F · Controlled flight into terrain, ATC error, pilot error
From San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Event
- 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
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 3
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Douglas DC-8F
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-8
- 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
- N8047U
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Francisco International Airport (SFO)To Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
- 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 (scheduled domestic cargo service)
- 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
- En route · holding (IFR)
- 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
- Controlled collision with ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel › Issued improper or conflicting instructions
- Pilot in command › Improper IFR operation
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
United Airlines Flight 2860 was a scheduled domestic cargo flight in the United States from San Francisco, California, to Chicago, Illinois, with an intermediate stop added at Salt Lake City, Utah. On December 18, 1977, operated by one of the airline's Douglas DC-8 Jet Traders, registration N8047U the flight was in a holding pattern in Utah and crashed into a mountain in the Wasatch Range near Fruit Heights. All three crew members, the only occupants of the plane, were killed in the accident.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board deduced that the cause of the accident was the "controller's issuance and the flight crew's subsequent acceptance of an incomplete and ambiguous holding clearance." The flight crew was cited for their failure to adhere to established lack-of-communication guidelines, and lack of adherence to established holding procedures. The aircraft's electrical problems were cited as a contributing factor. In addition, the flight's cockpit voice recorder was found to be inoperative, preventing the accident investigation from identifying any contributing factors in the cockpit.
The crash was one of two United Airlines DC-8 freighter accidents to happen in 6 years.
Text from the Wikipedia article “United Airlines Flight 2860” (revision 1359586434, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
INCOMP & ABIGUOUS HOLDING CLNC. #1 ELECT SYST INOP.HIT MTN NEAR 7200FT LVL.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: United Airlines Flight 2860
- Article
- United Airlines Flight 2860
- Revision
- 1359586434 · 2026-06-16 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q14711893
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19771218P066032
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "United Airlines Flight 2860" (page 26825730, revision 1359586434); merged with NTSB case NTSB19771218P066032 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19771218P066032: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19771218P066032
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19771218P066032: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19771218P066032: operated under Part 121: Air carrier (scheduled domestic cargo svc)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19771218P066032: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19771218P066032: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "United Airlines Flight 2860" and NTSB case NTSB19771218P066032, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.