Miami Air International Flight 665
Boeing 727-225A · Incident during initial climb
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to Nashville International Airport (BNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99IA072
- 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 727-225A
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N804MA
- Operator
- Miami Air International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)To Nashville International Airport (BNA), Nashville, TN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Door, cargo/baggage › Unlatched
- Ground personnel › Loading of cargo, inattentive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff, a passenger in row 32 saw the rear cargo door open as the airplane rotated and notified a flight attendant, who immediately advised the cockpit. The flight crew heard and felt bangs and airframe vibrations, declared an emergency, and returned for a landing without incident. Airport fire personnel saw the cargo door open 90 degrees and the handle to be in or flush with the door as it stopped on the runway. Crew interviews established that the airplane was late being repositioned to the loading area for a scheduled 0830 departure and arrived there at 0800. The captain said the flight engineer was hustling to finish his duties before departure, and after that he performed his final walk-around, which included checking the cargo doors, there were no cargo door lights on the annunciator panel. The captain said that the load manifest showed 172 passengers; 168 passengers were already on the airplane and 2 others arrived late. The ground handlers gave him a final count of 202 bags loaded in the cargo compartments before the late arriving passengers. The ground handling company stated they were positive they loaded a total of 202 bags onboard the airplane, although 5-6 bags were loaded just before the aircraft left. A postincident bag count revealed that there were 208 bags onboard the airplane. The ground handling company said that they were not rushed while working the airplane. With the handle closed, the door will not close flush with the doorframe. The aft cargo door proximity switch was tested and contamination was found between contact terminals; however, no determination could be made whether it would cause an indication anomaly on the annunciator panel. The cargo door open warning light and circuit functioned normally during postincident functional tests. According to the airline's Flight Operations Manual, the flight engineer is responsible for supervising the loading of the aircraft and ensuring that all doors are properly closed and locked.
Probable cause
The failure of the ground handling personnel to properly secure the aft cargo door following the loading of the late arriving baggage. A factor in the incident was an intermittent cargo door warning light circuit due to contamination in the proximity switch terminals.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99IA072
- Event ID
- 20001204X00072
- Case number
- LAX99IA072
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 46002612106d25203fc7488ec37b4dd7de9fd86234ad3e98e9062c4e3dbda884; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:01:01.417Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N804MA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.