Incident: TAP A339 at Los Angeles on Oct 20th 2026, unexpected turn on initial departure

A TAP Air Portugal Airbus A330-900, registration CS-TUS performing flight TP-248 from Los Angeles,CA (USA) to Lisbon (Portugal), was climbing out of Los Angeles' runway 24L when the aircraft after climbing through about 1000 feet began to sharply turn left and contacted departure. Departure immediatly instructed the aircraft to turn right back onto heading 250, which the aircraft did. After clearance to climb to 13000 feet departure instructed the crew to turn left to 090 degrees, however, the crew turned right and was stopped again by ATC, who queried whether they were okay. The crew confirmed they (and the aircraft) were okay. The crew said, they were given ORCKA Five Departure and were flying that departure, departure responded "not even close". The crew was instructed to turn left to 180 degrees, turned left and finally was sent on their way together with the instruction to call a phone number due to possible pilot deviation. The aircraft landed in Lisbon without further incident about 9.5 hours later.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/TAP248/history/20261020/2355Z/KLAX/LPPT

Orcka 5 Standard Instrument Departure (Graphics: FAA):

This article is published under license. Article Source