FedEx Express Flight 1478
Boeing 727-232 · Controlled flight into terrain
From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM) to Tallahassee International Airport (TLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA02MA054
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 3
- Survivors
- 3
- 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
- 3
- 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 727-232
- Flight
- FX1478
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N497FE
- Operator
- FedEx Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM)To Tallahassee International Airport (TLH), Tallahassee, FL
- 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
- Approach
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Crew/group coordination › Inadequate
- Flightcrew › Proper glidepath, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
FedEx Express Flight 1478 was a scheduled domestic cargo flight from Memphis International Airport, Tennessee, to Tallahassee International Airport, Florida. On July 26, 2002, the Boeing 727-232F aircraft flying this route crashed during landing at Tallahassee. All three flight crew members survived the accident with serious injuries, but the aircraft was destroyed.
Accident
Flight 1478 departed at 4:12 AM EDT, with first officer Frye as the pilot flying. The flight was initially intending to land on runway 27 due to wind gusts. However, after receiving a weather update at 5:24, the flight crew changed to a straight-in visual approach to Runway 09. Since the air traffic control (ATC) tower at Tallahassee did not open until 6:00, Flight 1478 was monitored by air traffic controllers in Jacksonville.
At 5:30, first officer Frye said, "Okay, I think I got a runway now." The flight crew then discussed the runway and the position of the aircraft. At 5:36, Flight 1478 was descending through an altitude of 1,000 ft and turning towards runway 09 from the airfield traffic pattern. At this time the precision approach path indicator (PAPI) lights displayed one red light and three white lights. The aircraft was slightly low at the final approach fix, but the crew failed to notice. 30 seconds before impact the aircraft was at 500 ft, all four PAPI lights were red, indicating the aircraft was well below the glideslope. At the same time the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) sounded a "five hundred" feet above ground level warning. Captain Walsh responded, "Stable" while first officer Frye said "Gonna have to stay just a little bit higher... I'm gonna lose the end of the runway." At 5:37, with the landing gear lowered and the flaps at 30 degrees, the aircraft impacted 50 ft-high trees located 3,650 ft short of the runway. The aircraft remained airborne for 1,000 ft and then crashed into the ground sliding 1,100 ft, striking a construction vehicle in the process and rotating 260 degrees before coming to a stop. Tallahassee International Airport was closed until 10:35.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted an investigation into the accident, determining that the cause of the accident was the flight crew's failure to maintain an appropriate flight path during a visual approach at night. The flight crew were also fatigued and did not adhere to standard operating procedures (SOP).
The flight crew testified the approach was normal until the last moment, and none of the crew verbalized that all four PAPIs were red. The approach was not stabilized by 500 ft above ground level and the flight crew failed to initiate a go-around. First officer Frye also underwent an eye test after the accident, revealing that it was difficult for him to distinguish between red, green and white. The NTSB concluded that based on those results, this made it difficult for Frye to distinguish between the color of the PAPI lights.
Text from the Wikipedia article “FedEx Express Flight 1478” (revision 1359576187, 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/publictn/publictn.htm. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-04/02.
On July 26, 2002, at 0537 eastern daylight time, a FedEx Boeing 727, N497FE, crashed during landing at Tallahassee, Florida. The airplane was operating as Flight 1478 from Memphis, Tennessee, to Tallahassee. The airplane crashed short of the runway, and was subsequently destroyed by fire. All three crewmembers were seriously injured.
Probable cause
The captain's and first officer's failure to establish and maintain a proper glidepath during the night visual approach to landing. Contributing to the accident was a combination of the captain's and first officer's fatigue, the captain's and first officer's failure to adhere to company flight procedures, the captain's and flight engineer's failure to monitor the approach, and the first officer's color vision deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: FedEx Express Flight 1478
- Article
- FedEx Express Flight 1478
- Revision
- 1359576187 · 2026-06-16 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q65241948
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA02MA054
- Event ID
- 20020801X01282
- Case number
- DCA02MA054
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "FedEx Express Flight 1478" (page 65290174, revision 1359576187); merged with NTSB case DCA02MA054 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA02MA054: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA02MA054
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA02MA054: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA02MA054: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record DCA02MA054: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA02MA054: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA02MA054: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "FedEx Express Flight 1478" and NTSB case DCA02MA054, 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.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. 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.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The narrative states the airplane "was operating as Flight 1478 from Memphis, Tennessee, to Tallahassee"; NE64 is a Nebraska identifier and NE the wrong state.