Cebu Pacific Flight 387
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 · Controlled flight into terrain
From Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL) to Lumbia Airfield (RPML)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA98RA021
- 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 · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 104 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 104
- 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
- Not recorded
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32
- Flight
- 5J387
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-9
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- RP-C1507
- Operator
- Cebu Pacific
- Onboard fatalities
- 104
- Route
- From Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)To Lumbia Airfield (RPML)
- 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 129: Foreign
- 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
- Not recorded
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Cebu Pacific Flight 387 was a domestic flight from Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Metro Manila to Lumbia Airfield (formerly Lumbia Airport) in Cagayan de Oro. On February 2, 1998, the 30-year-old McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 crashed on the slopes of Mount Sumagaya in Claveria. All 104 people on board died in the crash. It is the second deadliest air disaster in the Philippines after Air Philippines Flight 541, which occurred two years later.
The crash site is now a memorial, inaugurated on February 2, 2021, for the victims of the flight. The memorial is now part of a tourism complex in Misamis Oriental. The structure is 20 m tall.
Accident
The plane left Manila at 01:00 GMT and was scheduled to arrive at 03:03 GMT in Cagayan de Oro. The plane made a stopover at Tacloban at 02:20 GMT, though sources differ about whether it was a scheduled or unscheduled stop. According to one source, the flight made an unscheduled stop at Tacloban to deliver a needed airplane tire for another Cebu Pacific aircraft in Tacloban. The last contact was 15 minutes before the plane was due to land, with the airport's ATC. In that transmission, the pilot said he was 68 km from the airport and was starting to descend. There was no indication that the plane was in trouble. The plane crashed 45 km away from the airport.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The cause of the crash is still a source of controversy in the Philippines. Colonel Jacinto Ligot – who would later be involved in an unrelated corruption scandal more than a decade after the accident – was the chief of the Philippine Air Force rescue team, which faced difficulties due to the deep ravines and dense vegetation on the slopes of the mountain. The pilots were flying visually, not instrumentally, when the plane vanished from radar. While the skies were clear at the airport, the mountains may have been covered by fog. Chief of Staff General Clemente Mariano speculated that the plane "almost cleared the top of the mountain, but it may have suffered a down-draft, causing it to hit the mountain." Jesus Dureza, the crisis manager during the rescue and retrieval operations, said he found out the Air Transportation Office maps used by the pilots listed the elevation of Mt. Sumagaya at 5,000 ft above sea level, while the mountain is actually over 7,300 ft above sea level. This error might have misled the pilots to believe that they were clear of terrain, while in fact they were flying dangerously low. The ATO, on the other hand, pointed out in its official report deficiencies in the training of the pilots.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Cebu Pacific Flight 387” (revision 1351829535, 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
Sources
Wikipedia article: Cebu Pacific Flight 387
- Article
- Cebu Pacific Flight 387
- Revision
- 1351829535 · 2026-04-30 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q4016236
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA98RA021
- Event ID
- 20001211X09532
- Case number
- DCA98RA021
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Cebu Pacific Flight 387" (page 3680804, revision 1351829535); merged with NTSB case DCA98RA021 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA98RA021
- Operation
- airline flight number in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Cebu Pacific Flight 387" and NTSB case DCA98RA021, matched by the same aircraft maker and operator, and a matching death toll and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.