MarkAir Flight 3087 crash
Boeing 737-2X6C · Pilot error
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) to Unalakleet
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA90MA030
- 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
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- 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
- 4
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-2X6C
- Flight
- 3087
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N670MA
- Operator
- MarkAir
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AKTo Unalakleet
- 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 · IFR initial 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 terrain/water
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Crew/group coordination, inadequate
- Copilot/second pilot › Monitoring, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Crew/group coordination, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Descent, premature
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
MarkAir 3087 – an air accident which occurred on 2 June 1990 in Unalakleet in Alaska. A MarkAir Boeing 737 aircraft crashed while landing; nobody was killed in the accident.
Course of the accident
The aircraft that had the accident was a Boeing 737-2XC6 produced in 1984, belonging to the American airline MarkAir; it had registration number N670MA. The aircraft was making a flight from Anchorage to Unalakleet in Alaska with no passengers on board; it had been sent as an additional flight for passengers who had not managed to buy tickets for the regular MarkAir flight. The crew was performing the landing under instrument flight procedures because of limited visibility. Minutes before landing the pilots were talking about the lack of visibility of the runway; consequently the captain asked the co-pilot to establish contact with the tower in order to switch on the runway lights by means of the VHF radio. Then the co-pilot said that he could see the ground, when approx. 2.5 seconds later the collision with the ground occurred. The aircraft crashed on a rise covered with sparse mountain grass about 12 kilometres from the airport, breaking into two larger pieces. Nobody was killed in the accident; however, all the crew members were injured, including one stewardess seriously.
Investigation and cause
Causes
According to the report of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the main causes of the accident were deficiencies in crew coordination and in its preparation for a landing in accordance with the non-precision approach regulations, which consequently led to a premature descent. The accident may also have been contributed to by differences between the flight speeds, flap and undercarriage settings recommended by Boeing for specific phases of the approach and those in the carrier's checklists.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Polish Wikipedia article “Katastrofa lotu MarkAir 3087” (revision 79659982, 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
ON JUNE 2, 1990, AT 09:37 ALASKAN DAYLIGHT TIME, MARKAIR, INC., FLIGHT 3087, A BOEING 737-2X6C, REGISTERED IN THE US AS N670MA, CRASHED ABOUT 7.5 MILES SHORT OF RUNWAY 14, UNALAKLEET, ALASKA, WHILE EXECUTING A LOCALIZER APPROACH TO THAT RUNWAY. THE FLIGHT ORIGINATED AT 0828 AT ANCHORAGE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, ANCHORAGE, ALASKA. INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS EXISTED AT THE TIME, AND THE FLIGHT WAS ON AN IFR FLIGHT PLAN. THE CAPTAIN, THE FIRST OFFICER, AND A FLIGHT ATTENDANT SUSTAINED MINOR INJURIES. ANOTHER FLIGHT ATTENDANT SUSTAINED SERIOUS INJURIES. THERE WERE NO PASSENGERS ON BOARD, AND THE AIRCRAFT WAS DESTROYED. THE FLIGHT WAS OPERATED UNDER FAR PART 121. (SEE NTSB/AAR-91/02 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION)
Probable cause
DEFICIENCIES IN FLIGHTCREW COORDINATION, THEIR FAILURE TO ADEQUATELY PREPARE FOR AND PROPERLY EXECUTE THE UNK LOC RWY 14 NONPRECISION APPROACH AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT PREMATURE DESCENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Polish Wikipedia article: Katastrofa lotu MarkAir 3087
- Article
- Katastrofa lotu MarkAir 3087
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 79659982 · 2026-05-02 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA90MA030
- Event ID
- 20001212X23372
- Case number
- DCA90MA030
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- pl Wikipedia article "Katastrofa lotu MarkAir 3087" (page 5971465, revision 79659982), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DCA90MA030 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA90MA030: NTSB API eventDate, eventTimeUtc and eventTimeUtcOffsetHours (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA90MA030
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA90MA030: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA90MA030: 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 DCA90MA030: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA90MA030: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA90MA030: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "MarkAir Flight 3087 crash" and NTSB case DCA90MA030, 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.