National Airlines Flight 102
Boeing 747-428BCF · Load shift resulting in stall and loss of control
From Châteauroux Déols airport (CHR) to Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA13MA081
- 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
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 7
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 747-428BCF
- Flight
- N8102
- 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
- N949CA
- Operator
- National Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- 7
- Route
- From Châteauroux Déols airport (CHR)To Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Organizational issues › Management
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
National Airlines Flight 102 (N8102/NCR102) was a cargo flight operated by National Airlines between Camp Bastion (now Camp Shorabak) near the city of Lashkargah in Afghanistan and Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai, with a refueling stop at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. On April 29, 2013, the Boeing 747-400 operating the flight crashed within the perimeter of the Bagram Airfield moments after taking off, killing all seven people on board.
The subsequent investigation concluded that improperly secured cargo broke free during the take-off and rolled to the back of the cargo hold, crashing through the rear pressure bulkhead and disabling the rear flight control systems. This rendered the aircraft stuck in an uncontrollable pitch-up attitude and induced a stall and made recovery by the pilots impossible.
Accident
At the time of the accident, the airline had been operating between Camp Bastion and Dubai for a month. Flight 102 had originated in Camp Bastion, where it had been loaded with five heavy armoured vehicles, had stopped at Bagram Airfield to refuel. The aircraft then took off from Bagram's runway 03 at 15:30 local time and was climbing through 1,200 ft when its nose rose sharply. The aircraft then stalled, banked right, and leveled off just before impact with the ground; the whole aircraft exploded into a large fireball, almost damaging the vehicles nearby. The accident site was off the end of runway 03, within the perimeter of the airfield. The seven-person crew consisting of four pilots, two mechanics, and a loadmaster, all of whom were U.S. citizens, were killed in the accident. No one on the ground was injured.
A thunderstorm was also in the vicinity of Bagram at the time of the accident and the wind changed direction by 120° during one hour commencing approximately 35 minutes before the accident. A dashboard camera on a car in the vicinity of the runway end recorded the accident, which shows the aircraft pitching up, falling into a stall, and then sharply banking right after a slight bank to the left, indicating asymmetrical lift. The plane soon righted itself and then crashed at a shallow angle on the ground. CNN stated that a government official speaking on the condition of anonymity confirmed the video's authenticity.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority investigated the accident. The NTSB reported in a April 30, 2013 press release that representatives of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Boeing Company would also provide technical expertise and aid in the investigation.
On 2 June 2013, investigators from the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation of Afghanistan confirmed the load shift hypothesis as the starting point: the cargo of five mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (three Cougars and two Oshkosh M-ATV's), totaling 80 tons of weight, had not been properly secured. At least one armored vehicle had come loose and rolled backward, struck the E8 rack which housed both the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR), causing them to cease recording, and then crashed through the airplane's rear bulkhead, damaging it. In the process it crippled key hydraulic systems and severely damaged the horizontal stabilizer mechanism, including breaking its jackscrew, rendering the airplane uncontrollable and resulting in the abnormal pitch-up rotation, stall, and eventual crash.
The NTSB determined that the probable cause of this accident was "National Airlines' inadequate procedures for restraining special cargo loads, which resulted in the loadmaster's improper restraint of the cargo, combined with the aircraft being loaded with more heavy vehicles than could safely be secured in it." One of the key recommendations was to mandate training for all loadmasters.
Text from the Wikipedia article “National Airlines Flight 102” (revision 1375304513, 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 narrative
The Safety Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/aviation.aspx. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-15/01.
On April 29, 2013, about 1527 local time, a Boeing 747-400 BCF, N949CA, operated by National Air Cargo, Inc., dba National Airlines, crashed shortly after takeoff from Bagram Air Base, Bagram, Afghanistan. All seven crewmembers—the captain, first officer, loadmaster, augmented captain and first officer, and two mechanics—died, and the airplane was destroyed from impact forces and postcrash fire. The 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 supplemental cargo flight was destined for Dubai World Central - Al Maktoum International Airport, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Probable cause
National Airlines' inadequate procedures for restraining special cargo loads, which resulted in the loadmaster's improper restraint of the cargo, which moved aft and damaged hydraulic systems Nos. 1 and 2 and horizontal stabilizer drive mechanism components, rendering the airplane uncontrollable. Contributing to the accident was the Federal Aviation Administration's inadequate oversight of National Airlines' handling of special cargo loads.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: National Airlines Flight 102
- Article
- National Airlines Flight 102
- Revision
- 1375304513 · 2026-09-17 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q12257020
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA13MA081
- Event ID
- 20130429X12734
- Case number
- DCA13MA081
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "National Airlines Flight 102" (page 39255770, revision 1375304513); merged with NTSB case DCA13MA081 (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 DCA13MA081
- 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 "National Airlines Flight 102" and NTSB case DCA13MA081, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.