Boeing 777 incident over the Caribbean Sea
Boeing 777 · Failure of engine No. 1, technical malfunction
From Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) to Domodedovo, Moscow (Russia)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16WA087
- 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
- Occurrence
- 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 · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 371
- 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
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Boeing 777
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- VP-BHB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Route
- From Punta Cana (Dominican Republic)To Domodedovo, Moscow (Russia)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Not plotted: the Wikipedia article gives no coordinates, and its site names no town or airport that matches exactly.
From the Wikipedia article
The Boeing 777 incident over the Caribbean Sea was an aviation incident that occurred on the evening of 10 February 2016. A Boeing 777-2Q8ER passenger airliner of a Russian airline was operating international flight R2-554 on the Punta Cana – Moscow route, but 15 minutes after takeoff, at an altitude of 6000 metres, the aircraft's engine No. 1 (left) failed and caught fire. The pilots safely landed the aircraft at Punta Cana airport. None of the 371 people (351 passengers and 20 crew members) on board was injured. The crew of Flight 554 was given awards.
Chronology of events
The aircraft departed Punta Cana at 22:47 without delays. Most of the passengers were Russians. The takeoff went smoothly. After takeoff the passengers relaxed. Ahead of them was a scheduled 12-hour flight.
15 minutes after takeoff the aircraft was supposed to have climbed to an altitude of 9500 m, but it was at an altitude of 3700 m, since it could not climb higher. A minute later a loud bang rang out. After the bang the aircraft descended by about 300 m. But the calm did not last long. 2 minutes later the passengers flinched on hearing the clanging of metal. Panic immediately broke out. Thick black smoke with fire appeared near engine No. 1. The cabin began to fill with smoke, which blinded people's eyes and prevented them from breathing.
The pilots sent a distress signal and headed back to the point of departure. The flight attendants tried to calm the passengers. The aircraft contained 80 tonnes of fuel, enough for 12 hours of flight, so the aircraft was very heavy. The aircraft had to be landed as quickly as possible, that is, with full tanks.
At 23:25 the aircraft landed on the runway. During touchdown the landing gear began to burn because of overheated brakes. Immediately after stopping, the turbine began to burn even more strongly. The aircraft finally stopped only 149 m from the end of the runway. An urgent evacuation began. The flight attendants forbade passengers to take belongings from the aircraft because of the risk of an explosion. The last person left the burning aircraft at 23:39.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Ukrainian Wikipedia article “Інцидент з Boeing 777 над Карибським морем” (revision 47725629, 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
The Dominican Republic Comisión Investigadora de Accidentes de Aviación (CIAA) has notified the NTSB of an incident involving a BOEING 777-200 that occurred on February 10, 2016. The NTSB has appointed a U.S. Accredited Representative to assist the CIAA investigation under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13 as the State of Design and Manufacture of the airplane.
All investigative information will be released by the CIAA.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Ukrainian Wikipedia article: Інцидент з Boeing 777 над Карибським морем
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 47725629 · 2026-03-26 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q116896535
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA16WA087
- Event ID
- 20160216X04857
- Case number
- DCA16WA087
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- uk Wikipedia article "Інцидент з Boeing 777 над Карибським морем" (page 4573893, revision 47725629), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DCA16WA087 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia: none
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA16WA087
- Operation
- Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): A Russian airline's airliner on an international passenger flight: an airline flight. The article: "A Boeing 777-2Q8ER passenger airliner of a Russian airline was operating international flight R2-554 on the Punta Cana – Moscow route"
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Boeing 777 incident over the Caribbean Sea" and NTSB case DCA16WA087, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.