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On February 27, 2026, All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight 114, a Boeing 787-9 (registration JA873A) flying from Tokyo to Houston, experienced a tail strike while landing on runway 26L at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH). The scheduled international flight was operating under Part 129 (foreign air carrier rules). All 12 crew and 197 passengers were uninjured, but the aircraft suffered substantial damage to its lower fuselage.
Fog was forecast at IAH (with a 200 ft ceiling reported), so the crew, captain flying, first officer monitoring, elected to do a Category III Autoland approach. Both pilots recalled the approach and touchdown as normal: the captain confirmed the thrust levers were at idle, and the speed brakes deployed. But as he reached to raise the thrust reversers, he noticed the nose pitch up unexpectedly. He pushed the control column forward hard enough to disconnect the autopilot and lower the nose, then pulled back slightly to avoid slamming the nose gear down. The first officer, watching the flight mode annunciator, called out that the system had unexpectedly entered TOGA (take-off/go-around) mode, though neither pilot recalled pressing the TOGA switch. Pitch reached about 7.5° before the situation resolved and the rollout continued uneventfully; only while exiting the runway did the captain notice a “tail strike” alert on the engine indicating and crew alerting system (EICAS).
Post-landing inspection confirmed substantial lower-fuselage damage consistent with runway contact, plus scraping on the tail strike sensor and a lower-fuselage antenna. No mechanical malfunction was found.
Flight data recorder analysis reconstructed the sequence precisely: at touchdown, both autopilot pitch and autothrottle were in “flare” mode. About half a second after touchdown, the TOGA switch was pressed, switching both systems into TOGA mode. The autothrottle’s TOGA mode was later cancelled when the throttles were moved to reverse thrust, but the autopilot’s pitch mode remained in TOGA and began commanding the elevator and stabilizer toward a go-around pitch attitude, pitch increased from 3.5° to 7.4° in about two seconds. Roughly five seconds after TOGA activated, the captain pushed the control column forward, and two seconds after that applied a peak force of 40 pounds, which disconnected the autopilot, but by then pitch had already reached 7.8° (later peaking at 7.9°), enough to strike the tail. The aircraft’s tail strike protection system had activated and was trying to reduce elevator deflection, but its authority was too limited to prevent the strike.
Since the crew didn’t recall pressing TOGA and there was no evidence of an autopilot malfunction, investigators concluded the captain likely activated the TOGA switch inadvertently while reaching for the thrust reversers at touchdown. Boeing noted that the conditions meant to inhibit TOGA activation at that point in the landing hadn’t yet been satisfied, so the system accepted the input. Because the crew was unaware TOGA had engaged, they didn’t recognize the pitch increase quickly enough to counteract it before the tail strike occurred.
The NTSB’s probable cause: the captain’s inadvertent activation of the TOGA switch at touchdown, causing an uncorrected pitch increase that resulted in the tail strike. Findings cited pilot issues around incorrect action selection and aircraft control, plus damage to the fuselage’s main structure. This was a Class 4 investigation; the NTSB did not travel to the scene, and the report was published September 8, 2026.
Image Attribution: Alec Wilson from Khon Kaen, Thailand, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons