United Airlines Close Call: Boeing 777 Came Within 775 Feet Of Hitting The Pacific Ocean

A Boeing 777-200 taking off from Maui’s airport nearly impacted the ocean on December 18, in a previously-unreported incident first revealed by The Air Current.

United Airlines flight 1722 departed for San Francisco at 2:49 p.m., climbed to 2,200 feet, and then went into a steep dive at a rate of over 8,000 feet per minute. While the pilots were able to recover, they came within 775 feet of the ocean.

The aircraft quickly recovered, but not before descending below 775 feet. Two people familiar with the incident said the climb produced forces of nearly 2.7 times the force of gravity on the aircraft and its occupants as that steep descent transitioned to an 8,600 foot per minute climb. The entire incident appears to have stretched no more than 45 seconds and in between radio calls with air traffic controllers in Maui.

Maui was experiencing heavy rain at the time of the departure, and the event came a day after a Hawaiian Airlines flight from Phoenix experienced severe turbulence injuring several people enroute to Honolulu.

The Air Current reports that air traffic control tapes do not indicate any real-time awareness of the incident on the part of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization.

According to United Airlines, the pilots of the aircraft filed a safety report, however no report was made to the National Transportation Safety Board given the lack of injuries to passengers or damage to the aircraft, and the widebody was inspected prior to its next flight to Chicago a couple of hours later.

This incident preceded a near miss between Southwest Airlines and Fedex planes in Austin and between American and Delta jets at New York JFK.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Pingbacks

Comments

  1. Wtf is going on with commercial aviation?? We’ve had multiple hairsbreadth from mass tragedy multiple times in the past few months. A major reckoning is due at the FAA

  2. Abey, it could have been “unexpected turbulence” or wind shear. . . nothing more . . . no screw-up on anyone’s part. In the absence of known adverse atmospheric conditions that someone failed to act upon, I wouldn’t be quick to condemn the FAA or anyone else on this one.

  3. the real question is why this is now just becoming public.
    Hard to believe no passengers said anything

  4. The major US airlines have literally halved the training and flight time requirements for new hire pilots, as well as existing but less experienced pilots, all in the attempt to not have to bring back the experienced ones who took early retirement during the pandemic–thus saving money. It will cost them when there is a catastrophe, which unfortunately seems sooner rather than later.

  5. It’s wind shear associated with the presence of a microburst in the area. The airplane didn’t actually descend at 8700 ft/min. If they had they’d all be dead. It was just the few seconds of the downdraft while it lasted, that measured against time, was at approximately 8700ft/min. They climbed back to safety roughly at the same rate. The whole thing was over in 45 seconds. To the passengers in the back it just felt like rough severe turbulence/ downdraft. That’s why nothing was reported because there was nothing to report in the first place. Just a rough ride, that’s all.

  6. Please if you are going to report these type of incidents, make sure you include as much detail as possible because as it is the report tells you almot NOTHING. It reads more like a “sensational journalism” beat up.

  7. And what exactly does a weather incident have to do with pilot error and ATC???
    The last paragraph is silly.

  8. Referring to airspeed and altitude data on FlightRadar24, compared to a normal takeoff profile, everything before and after the incident appears normal. Strongly suggests it was something going on with the air mass. Weather was in the area. Why nothing until now? The fall was all of 10 seconds. No time to pull out the camera. Yes time to pull out the Rosary beads. But no time to pull out the camera.

  9. Gravelly Point Guy has probably got it correct above.

    They were at 2200 feet. Wind sheer, fortunately very briefly (just a few seconds), and they had (just barely) enough altitude to survive it. I’m sure it felt like a handful at the time. If they were in clouds the whole time, passengers would just feel turbulence, would not know how much altitude they lost, or how little altitude they had when they broke free. Weather was reported with very low ceiling, 900 feet, but that’s a spot measurement, and actual ceiling could have been lower or higher when they regained control, so they may have been in the clouds the entire time (or the crew may have seen the ocean right below them when they busted out of the clouds).

    Not sure what “additional training” would do here: the fact is, sometimes the airplane is getting tossed around, and you (even the crew) are just along for the ride, and your fate is ultimately in the hands of mother nature. It’s unrealistic to expect that planes are 100% in control 100% of the time – weather rules. In most cases, there’s no great danger from turbulence. If you’re very low, then that’s another story, as your margin for “luck” is much smaller.

    Glad they got through this OK. I wonder if the cockpit crew realized exactly how low they briefly got in the moment (assuming they could see when they dropped below the overcast) or if they were busy flying the plane and only noticed the numbers later…maybe they needed to change their underwear once they climbed up and things stabilized.

  10. Seems like it was a microburst handled appropriately by the pilots. Good training. Next.

  11. My husband and I were on this flight sitting in the back of the aircraft. It happened soon after takeoff when we were all seated with seatbelts on. The plane dipped down and then up like a quick fall and recovery. While several people screamed, no one was injured and it was over quickly. We did not realize how close the plane got to the ocean. The rest of the flight was uneventful, so while it was scary, it ended up being a blip in the flight- though a memorable one.

  12. If it was weather/turbulence, the flight crew should be criminally charged. That kind of severe weather has to be reported to ATC. If weather caused that kind of altitude drop on a B777, it could easily be catastrophic for smaller aircraft departing OGG. The fact that the crew did not report the drop in altitude to ATC indicates that it is not weather and more likely an issue with an incorrect altitude entered into the computer or loss of orientation when hand flying.

  13. Putting aside that this could be a sudden downdraft and the crew didn’t do anything wrong, there seems to be too many things popping up with pilots and commercial aviation. Anyone complaining about the FAA needs to realize government does not help nor make anything or anyone more safe. The issue seems to stem from poor pilot behavior with unions fomenting dissent, unions that did not encourage pilots to ignore Covid mandates on their aircraft and instead stood by pilots who enforced Covid restrictions when they could just ignore them, and airlines that allow disruptive
    pilot union behavior to continue when airlines could severely clamp down on pilots.

    Senior Pilots earn 275-375K and a lot of the mid experience pilots earn 225K and up. Pilots should be focused on piloting skills and not on disrupting service to boost their fat paychecks. The constant strikes and threats from pilots, mechanics, cabin crew, and airport workers has led to chaos at airports that certainly doesn’t let pilots focus on being good airmen. They have all the commotion in their heads.

  14. @Nancy thank you for the first person account. I wondered how such a seemingly severe event would not be talked about by passengers after the flight.

  15. If it was an microburst it’s absolutely unprofessional to NOT report this to the Maui controllers for the next aircraft taking off. It just gives the appearance of a coverup. Add to the fact a safety report was filed and the pilots were required by their employer and or the FAA to have additional training afterwards.

  16. At 2,200 feet the autopilot would have already been engaged rather than the FO hand flying the plane. Glad we don’t have to learn the cause TV show Mayday, Air Disasters.

  17. Dr Westbrook

    Please stop. Senior Captains today make 12% LESS per hour than what Senior Captains made in 1978 adjusted for inflation. Unions have done a tremendous service to the public in getting pilot rest rules quantified and put into federal law. And In fighting managements who cut cut cut cut training time every opportunity they can.

    Wonder what the pilot shortage would look like of you had your way?

    These new young pilots would do just fine with the training time in classrooms and simulators that pilots in the 70’s and 80’s had.

    It’s really YOUR fault because you have the transportation system YOU are willing to pay for. Airlines have to cut somewhere to make you happy.

  18. “Max Gross says:
    February 13, 2023 at 1:17 pm
    At 2,200 feet the autopilot would have already been engaged“

    Wrong. Pilots routinely hand fly the plane up to 18,000 or higher. Again another fairy tale.

  19. OK, for all those blaming the pilots, the FAA, the unions, lack of training, ect, nope. This was wind shear. Yes, it was a close call, or seemingly was. But the pilots recovered the aircraft and flew to San Fransisco. The only question that needs to be asked is why they flew into the storm in the first place. Pilots are trained to recognized and avoid wind shear situations. It’s one of the most dangerous weather phenomena that has resulted in several deadly accidents over the decades. But we now have better technology to detect it, and training to avoid it, as well as how to recover from it, which these pilots did. There is a lot of redundancy in what is done to avoid it. But it most likely is not human error, and at worse bad judgement.

  20. Dr Westbrook
    What might be your qualifications regarding flying, piloting, navigating, operating a complex flight system (ie. Aeroplane)?
    Having been involved in the industry (aircraft maintenance) I can say with reasonable confidence you are talking absolute malarkey.
    You really don’t know what you are talkin about & are just trying to union bash.

  21. @W:

    “Wrong. Pilots routinely hand fly the plane up to 18,000 or higher. Again another fairy tale.”

    Not a fairly tale at all in modern aviation.

    Your post indicates you are living in the distant past.

  22. https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/united/141614-ogg-nose-dive-woah.html

    All please reference this linked forum page via Airline Pilot Central. Essentially its a page for all pilots to discuss matters and share data. It is a fantastic “fly on the wall” observation as opposed to guessing what occurred.

    In this case, this is not a windshear recovery like being discussed here. The pilot not flying retracted the flaps to the incorrect setting, Flap 1 instead of 5, without confirming. Pilot flying still was hand flying he aircraft, which then approached stall and caused the plane to sink. The timing of the flap move occurs when the engines also reduce power slightly assuming standard procedure from takeoff thrust. So not the right time to incorrectly change the flap position with a higher stall speed. While the flap handle is out of direct eyesight from the left seat of a 777, the pilot flying will still receive flap setting feedback on the EADI attitude indicator, in which case both pilots failed to notice this. This was not windshear recovery. The pilots did not do a great job aside from not putting the aircraft into the ocean and recovering.

    APC has similar threads in American’s subcategory for AA106 and FedEx’s on SWA708 (nothing in SWA’s forums). In this case it is apparently well known already of the pilot error amongst UAL pilots. Whats even more concerning is in the later pages of the UA pilots forum is the large amount of pilots saying “its ok, plane eventually landed safely, no one was hurt, please move on…” In the discussion on AA106, there’s a similar feeling amongst pilots……

    That is a concern

  23. Wow! Whole lot of experts here from wanna- be pilots to anti union clowns. Guess they should all be applying with the NTSB, or the Weather Channel….

  24. I keep reading what happened on the UAL 777. The copilot got vertigo and tried to turn on the A/P, the captain was “heads down”, some how the plane was pushed over into a dive, really The captain looked at the flap handle and became “disoriented” and some how pushed the plane into a dive, really. The plane came to within 300 feet of the water.
    Maybe the flight director/auto pilot wasn’t set correctly during the preflight. When the A/P was engaged it started to follow a nose down command.
    The take off was during bad weather. Any pilot would have been on the highest alert, not going “heads down”. If a pilot gets vertigo or JUST looses it in these conditions, he should never be in a commercial pilot.
    I wonder if they ever pulled the flight recorder and looked at what really happened. The voice recorder only has a 2 hour loop. I think this is why they continued. If there was windshear they would have called it out and reported it to the tower. There was no report of windshear to the tower.

  25. Its such a poorly written description I cant really follow it and it doesnt seem to line up with the flight path map either. The writer doesnt seem to understand what he’s writing about….probably not a pilot or he’s a low time general aviation pilot. Also love the follow on comments….jeez, at least know what youre talking about before commenting. It’s like the news talking heads that have zero experience.

    Yes the call for flaps 5 could be misinterpreted by the FO very easily as calling for flaps 15, but stopping at flaps 15 wouldn’t cause a loss of altitude or speed, esp as he was accelerating in the climb. My guess is he still had auto throttles on and speed set which is fine. Seems capt was hand flying tho most would have hooked up the autopilot by now if really bad weather or bumpy. I loved to hand fly until I was above 20k so I understand that. The map points out flaps 1, but writer doesn’t seem to key on that. Just the call for 5 but stopping at 15 which isnt any real issue. Going to flaps 1 when calling for flaps 5 would be an issue but still easily dealt with. As speed increases on climb you can bring the flaps up….I don’t see what the FO did wrong except stop at 15 which wouldnt be a problem. Overspeeding the flaps is a different issue and wouldn’t cause altitude loss and you can simply pull the nose up a but to bleed off speed IF YOU ARE SCANNING. But the map suggests the flaps went to 15 then 5 then 1. If in fact it went to 1 before the pilot wanted that, then that could cause altitude loss IF THE CAPT wasnt watching his ADI and VSI or he let the nose drop as trim would want to go there. If he kept climbing and airspeed hadnt built up enough and the flaps kept coming up then his speed could get too slow and the plane wants to drop over to regain speed as it gets heavy in trim or it gets close to stall, which would trigger the auto calls of “pull up”. I really dont see why it was descending unless the capt wasnt scanning or didn’t see his speed. The forum comment was probably closest to being correct but thats after the flaps went to 1 and he was too slow to bring them to 1 yet. Seems more of a capt flying issue to me, but importantly the FO needs to be crosschecking and scanning too and call out things he sees that aren’t correct; Or challenge a call to verify. Team work is everything but someone HAS to always “FLY THE PLANE”.

  26. One of the major things that can cause a nose down after takeoff. The FD wasn’t set correctly before T/O. It still had a nose down command. When the A/P was turned on, it followed the nose down command. There are many things to prevent this, but seems they weren’t followed.

  27. I wish I knew what the FMA display was showing before the take off. Was it TOGO TOGO? If the preflight wasn’t accomplished correctly, there could have a nose down command, to the A/P.

  28. Why are the names of captain and first officer not mentioned in any of the sources I access on flight events on flight 1722?

    Generally names, hours of experience, and ages are given.

  29. Why are the names not given?
    Because there are lots of nut cases out there, the last thing we need it for the pilots to be hunted down and harassed or worst.

Comments are closed.