Transamerica Airlines Flight 18
Lockheed 188C · Structural failure due to structural overload after loss of control caused by instrument failure
From Hill Air Force Base (HIF) to Nellis Air Force Base (LSV)
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
- Unknown
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Lockheed 188C
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed 188
- 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
- N859U
- Operator
- Transamerica Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hill Air Force Base (HIF)To Nellis Air Force Base (LSV)
- 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 135: Air taxi & commuter (domestic military cargo contract)
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
- Miscellaneous
- 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
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Electrical failure
- Miscellaneous acts, conditions › Material failure
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Systems › Other
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Salt Lake City, UT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
Transamerica Airlines Flight 18 was a night-time cargo flight on behalf of the United States Air Force on 18 November 1979. On this day the flight was operated with a Lockheed L-188C Electra cargo aircraft of the airline Transamerica Airlines. The aircraft suffered structural failure and crashed after the Lockheed had gone out of control as a result of an instrument failure. All three occupants were killed in the accident.
Accident sequence
The aircraft took off from Hill Air Force Base in Utah on a cargo flight to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, which was conducted under instrument flight rules. During the climb from flight level FL120 to flight level FL130, the crew reported a power failure and requested heading instructions that could be carried out without functioning compasses (so-called "no gyro vectors"). They also requested immediate clearance to descend. During the descent the aircraft reached a high airspeed and a high rate of descent. In the process the aircraft's structural load limits were exceeded, whereupon the Electra broke apart and fell to the ground. All three crew members were killed.
Investigation and cause
Cause
After the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took over the investigation. The final report was published on 20 January 1986. In it, the investigators found that a progressive failure of the aircraft's electrical system had occurred in flight, which had also led to the deactivation or malfunction of some critical flight instruments and the instrument lighting while the flight was being conducted in instrument meteorological conditions. The anomalies in the instrument indications made it difficult to determine the aircraft's attitude and led to disorientation and a loss of control of the aircraft by the pilots. The crew's efforts to regain control had resulted in aerodynamic loads that exceeded the aircraft's design limits and caused it to break up in flight.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Transamerica-Airlines-Flug 18” (revision 256824039, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB remarks
PROGRESSIVE VOLTAGE DECAY ON PRIORITY BUS A SYS FOR UNDET REASON.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Transamerica-Airlines-Flug 18
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 256824039 · 2025-06-09 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q99359333
- 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
- 19791118P075010
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Transamerica-Airlines-Flug 18" (page 11415611, revision 256824039), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NTSB19791118P075010 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19791118P075010: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19791118P075010
- Map position
- NTSB record NTSB19791118P075010: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19791118P075010: 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 NTSB19791118P075010: operated under Part 135: Air taxi & commuter (mil contract-cargo-domestic)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19791118P075010: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19791118P075010: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Transamerica Airlines Flight 18" and NTSB case NTSB19791118P075010, 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.