Evergreen Int'L Airlines Boeing 747-100 incident
Boeing 747-100 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From New Chitose Airport (RJCC) to Fairbanks International Airport (FAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99IA025
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 747-100
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- N481EV
- Operator
- Evergreen Int'L Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Chitose Airport (RJCC), ChitoseTo Fairbanks International Airport (FAI)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, improper
- Thrust reverser, actuator › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing, the number four engine thrust reverser remained deployed. A tailpipe fire occurred, with no reported cockpit indications of either the fire or the extended reverser. Ground personnel notified the crew of the fire, and the engine was shut down. A teardown inspection revealed that the thrust reverser pneumatic drive unit (PDU) had been incorrectly assembled at the previous overhaul, 113 hours and 26 cycles prior to failure. The required stroke of the PDU interlock mechanism is 1.318 to 1.326 inches. At disassembly, the stroke was measured to be 1.230 inches. This stroke is required to allow the gear change mechanism to fully shift (from extend, to retract). The PDU retract pawl fracture surfaces were indicative of overstress. The lowest ambient surface temperature the airplane had been exposed to at the various airports during the 26 landing cycles had been -13 degrees Fahrenheit. The surface temperature during the failure of the PDU was -27 degrees Fahrenheit.
Probable cause
The improper overhaul of the thrust reverser pneumatic drive unit, and the subsequent failure of the thrust reverser actuator. Factors associated with the incident were the inadequate quality assurance procedures by the overhaul company.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99IA025
- Event ID
- 20001204X00001
- Case number
- ANC99IA025
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- 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.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 25d89f24618d264f897b1f4f10a9a449fa241e3a84737c757c3545aa4be47dea; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:00:20.871Z.