Southern Air Transport Flight 517
Lockheed L-382G · Loss of control after dual engine failure
From Travis Air Force Base (SUC) to Travis Air Force Base (SUU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA87MA024
- 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
- 5 · 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
- 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
- General aviation
- 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 L-382G
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed L-382
- 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
- N517SJ
- Operator
- Southern Air Transport
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Travis Air Force Base (SUC)To Travis Air Force Base (SUU)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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 · VFR go-around
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
- Compressor assembly › Contamination
- Compressor assembly › Failure, partial
- Fluid, oil › Other
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
Southern Air Transport Flight 517 (ICAO flight number: SAT517) was a Southern Air Transport training flight departing from and returning to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California on 8 April 1987. On this flight a serious accident occurred when the Lockheed L-100-30 Hercules being used went out of control shortly before landing and crashed to the ground. All five occupants of the aircraft died in the accident.
Accident sequence
On that day the aircraft was used for training flights. After a first series of training flights the aircraft was landed at Travis Air Force Base and part of the crew changed. At 14:45 the aircraft took off again. It first flew to McClellan Air Force Base, where approaches and landings were practised. The aircraft then flew back to Travis Air Force Base. One of the two first officers in training was to carry out an ILS approach to runway 21L. The pilot aborted the landing approach, whereupon the captain took the controls and initiated a missed approach. When he increased thrust, engines No. 1 and 2 (left outboard and left inboard) failed. The aircraft then rolled to the left and struck at 17:32 in the area of the air base's perimeter fence with its nose pointing downwards and an excessive left roll angle. All five occupants were killed and the aircraft was completely destroyed.
Accident investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board took over the investigation into the cause of the accident after the crash. The final report was published on 31 December 1988. The investigators attributed the engine failure to the presence of oil residues in the compressors of the two engines, which in turn was said to be a consequence of deficiently performed maintenance work by the operator. Because of the oil residues, the compressors would not have been able to respond to a sudden increase in thrust. The investigators saw a contributing factor to the accident in the fact that the captain had continued to try to carry on with the missed approach after the failure of the two engines, and that the high-lift devices had been retracted when the missed approach was initiated.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Southern-Air-Transport-Flug 517” (revision 237196402, 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 narrative
CRASHED IN STEEP LEFT TURN DRG GO-AROUND AFTER BALKED LANDING. INSTRUCTOR TOOK CONTROLS AND INITIATED GO-AROUND AFTER STUDENT LNDD IN IMPROPER ATTITUDE. ENGINES NUMBER 1 & 2 FAILED TO RESPOND WHEN THROTTLES ADVANCED. BOTH ENGINES DECELERATED. AIRSPEED DECREASED DURING GO-AROUND. FLAPS WERE RETRACTED CAUSING REDUCTION IN HYD PRESSURE. INSTRUCTOR UNABLE TO MAINTAIN VMC SPEED, LOST CONTROL. ACFT DESTROYED BY POSTCRASH FIRE. AIRFIELD PERIMETER FENCE DMGD. TEARDOWN AND TESTING REVEALED HEAVY ACCUMULATION OF OIL/TAR RESIDUES ON BLEED VALVES AND THROUGHOUT ENGINES NUMBER 1 & 2 COMPRESSORS, LIMITING ABILITY OF ENGINES TO RESPOND TO THROTTLE MOVEMENT. HISTORY OF RECENT ENGINE AND PROPELLER OIL LEAKS. NO RECORD OF ENGINE WASHES AFTER LEAKS, ALTHOUGH REQUIRED BY MAINTENANCE PROCEDURES. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, SEE SUMMARY REPORT NTSB/AAR-88/03/SUM.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Southern-Air-Transport-Flug 517
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 237196402 · 2023-09-10 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q111012520
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA87MA024
- Event ID
- 20001213X30625
- Case number
- DCA87MA024
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Southern-Air-Transport-Flug 517" (page 12065158, revision 237196402), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DCA87MA024 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date (local date; NTSB record DCA87MA024 stores the UTC date 1987-04-09)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA87MA024
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA87MA024: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA87MA024: 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 DCA87MA024: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities (the NTSB record states no total)
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA87MA024: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Southern Air Transport Flight 517" and NTSB case DCA87MA024, 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.
- The NTSB record dates it 1987-04-09, the UTC date it stores; the local date, 1987-04-08, is the Wikipedia article's and is used.