FedEx Express Flight 647
McDonnell Douglas MD-10-10F · Runway excursion due to landing gear collapse and pilot error
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK) to Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA04MA011
- 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
- 0
- Occupants
- 7
- Survivors
- 7
- 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
- 2
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-10-10F
- Flight
- FX647
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-10
- 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
- N364FE
- Operator
- FedEx Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, CATo Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM), Memphis, TN
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Check pilot › Supervision, inadequate
- Copilot/second pilot › Flare, improper
- Copilot/second pilot › Proper alignment, improper
- Landing gear, main gear › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
FedEx Express Flight 647 was a scheduled domestic cargo flight between Metropolitan Oakland International Airport, Oakland, California and Memphis International Airport, Memphis, Tennessee in the United States, that crashed during landing on December 18, 2003. Everybody on board survived the accident, and the aircraft was written off.
Flight and accident
On December 18, 2003, Flight 647 was scheduled to depart Oakland for Memphis at 08:10 Central Standard Time (CST), and after a brief delay due to a package sorting issue, departed for Memphis at 08:32. The departure from Oakland and cruise between Oakland and Memphis were uneventful.
The flight touched down at about 12:26 on runway 36R, and almost immediately the right landing gear collapsed. The plane veered off the right side of the runway, catching fire as it did so. The first officer received minor injuries as she evacuated the aircraft, as did one of the five non-revenue FedEx pilots who were on board as passengers. It was later discovered that the non-revenue pilot who activated the emergency exit slide had not been adequately trained in its operation. The handle that was pulled released the slide so it could be used as a raft in the event of a water landing, and the slide subsequently detached from the airplane.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted a full investigation of the accident. It found that although the aircraft had encountered a crosswind during landing, the conditions were well within the safe capabilities of the aircraft. The first officer did not properly line up the plane before touchdown, nor did she slow the plane adequately before touchdown, so that the plane landed excessively hard. As the plane landed, the crosswind caused the right wing to drop approximately six degrees. This was beyond the design capabilities for the right main landing gear, and it snapped as a result. The NTSB also cited the captain for failing to check the work of the first officer.
The NTSB further found that FAA Order 8400.10 (Air Transportation Aviation Inspector's Handbook) was deficient in the section addressing assurance of evacuation training for the flight crew.
Text from the Wikipedia article “FedEx Express Flight 647” (revision 1359574033, 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-05/01.
On December 18, 2003, about 1226 central standard time, Federal Express Corporation (FedEx) flight 647, a Boeing MD-10-10F (MD-10), N364FE, crashed while landing at Memphis International Airport (MEM), Memphis, Tennessee. The right main landing gear collapsed after touchdown on runway 36R, and the airplane veered off the right side of the runway. After the gear collapsed, a fire developed on the right side of the airplane. Of the two flight crewmembers and five nonrevenue FedEx pilots on board the airplane, the first officer and one nonrevenue pilot received minor injuries during the evacuation. The postcrash fire destroyed the airplane's right wing and portions of the right side of the fuselage. Flight 647 departed from Metropolitan Oakland International Airport (OAK), Oakland, California, about 0832 (0632 Pacific standard time) and was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 121 on an instrument flight rules flight plan.
Probable cause
1) the first officer's failure to properly apply crosswind landing techniques to align the airplane with the runway centerline and to properly arrest the airplane's descent rate (flare) before the airplane touched down; and 2) the captain's failure to adequately monitor the first officer's performance and command or initiate corrective action during the final approach and landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: FedEx Express Flight 647
- Article
- FedEx Express Flight 647
- Revision
- 1359574033 · 2026-06-16 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q5361613
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA04MA011
- Event ID
- 20040121X00082
- Case number
- DCA04MA011
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "FedEx Express Flight 647" (page 6920241, revision 1359574033); merged with NTSB case DCA04MA011 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA04MA011: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA04MA011
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA04MA011: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA04MA011: 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 DCA04MA011: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA04MA011: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA04MA011: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "FedEx Express Flight 647" and NTSB case DCA04MA011, 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.