Japan Air Lines Flight 90
Convair 880 · Loss of control on takeoff during a training flight with simulated engine failure
From Grant County International Airport (MWH) to Grant County International Airport (MWH)
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
- 2
- 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 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
Convair 880
- Aircraft type
- Convair 880
- 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
- JA-8028
- Operator
- Japan Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grant County International Airport (MWH)To Grant County International Airport (MWH)
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Engine failure or malfunction
- 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 › Simulated conditions
- Pilot in command › Failed to maintain directional control
- Pilot in command › Inadequate supervision of flight
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Moses Lake, WA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
Japan Air Lines Flight 90 (flight number: JL90, callsign: JAPAN AIR 90) was a Japan Air Lines training flight departing from and returning to Grant County International Airport, Moses Lake, Washington on 24 June 1969. On this flight, a Convair CV-880 passenger aircraft crashed immediately after a takeoff with a simulated engine failure. Three of the five occupants of the aircraft were killed in the accident.
Accident sequence
On that day the aircraft was used for a training flight. The pilots received clearance to take off from runway 32R of Moses Lake Airport. After takeoff, the check captain reduced the power of engine No. 4 in order to test to what extent the first officer would initiate emergency procedures. The aircraft then began to yaw to the right until, 6,500 feet beyond the start of the runway threshold, the nacelle of engine No. 4 (right outboard) touched down on the runway. The Convair skidded abruptly and considerably to the right off the runway, broke apart and caught fire. It only came to a stop after sliding through the terrain over a distance of 2,600 feet. In its final position the wreckage was aligned on an easterly heading. Four crew members managed to escape from the burning aircraft through a tear in the fuselage. Two of them later died of their severe injuries. The charred body of the remaining crew member, a trainee, was later found in the burned-out cockpit section. The aircraft was almost completely destroyed by the impact and the ensuing fire.
According to the captain's statement, he had taken over control of the aircraft when he noticed the hesitant reaction of the first officer being checked. Although he increased the power of engine No. 4 again, he no longer managed to bring the yawing motion under control and to carry out an emergency landing off the runway.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board took over after the investigation into the cause of the accident. They concluded that the accident had occurred due to delayed action by the pilots during a takeoff with a simulated engine failure. They had not corrected the yawing motion in time, until the aircraft eventually touched down on the runway.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Japan-Air-Lines-Flug 90” (revision 260789505, 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
DELAYED CORRECTIVE ACTION DURING SIMULATED NR 4 ENG OUT. CAUSED EXCESSIVE SIDESLIP.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Japan-Air-Lines-Flug 90
- Article
- Japan-Air-Lines-Flug 90
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 260789505 · 2025-10-21 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q86737610
- 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
- 19690624P033548
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Japan-Air-Lines-Flug 90" (page 12059088, revision 260789505), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NTSB19690624P033548 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19690624P033548: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19690624P033548
- Map position
- NTSB record NTSB19690624P033548: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19690624P033548: 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
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19690624P033548: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19690624P033548: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Japan Air Lines Flight 90" and NTSB case NTSB19690624P033548, 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.