Carnival Airlines Boeing 737-400 incident
Boeing 737-400 · Incident during initial climb
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA95IA238
- 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 737-400
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N404KW
- Operator
- Carnival Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL)To Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Islip, NY
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Company maintenance personnel › Procedure inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING INITIAL TAKEOFF CLIMB THE FLIGHT CREW ENCOUNTERED SMOKE IN THE COCKPIT AND PASSENGER COMPARTMENT. THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND DECLARED AN EMERGENCY, RETURNED TO THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT, AND COMMANDED AN EMERGENCY EVACUATION OF PASSENGERS AND FLIGHT CREW. TWO AFT EMERGENCY SLIDES DID NOT DEPLOY. EXAMINATION OF THE AIRPLANE REVEALED THE SMOKE/FUMES ENTERED THE AIRPLANE THROUGH THE AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM AS A RESULT OF A WASH SOLUTION REMAINING IN THE LEFT ENGINE LONGER THAN REQUIRED DURING AN ENGINE WASH. WHILE THE ENGINE WAS BEING WASHED ON THE DAY BEFORE THE ACCIDENT, THE STARTER FAILED AND THE SOLUTION REMAINED IN THE ENGINE MORE THAN THE REQUIRED 20 MINUTES WHILE THE STARTER WAS BEING CHANGED. EXAMINATION OF THE AFT EMERGENCY SLIDES REVEALED THE INSTALLATION SAFETY PINS WERE STILL INSTALLED.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE WRITTEN MAINTENANCE PROCEDURES ADDRESSING STEPS TO BE FOLLOWED IN THE EVENT OF A COMPONENT FAILURE DURING AN ENGINE WASH. THE EMERGENCY SLIDES FAILED TO DEPLOY DUE TO IMPROPER INSTALLATION BY COMPANY MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA95IA238
- Event ID
- 20001207X04543
- Case number
- MIA95IA238
- 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, damage. 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: 4f4000c73a7510328c47b3d55c48205ec4d293b425cff71d58de11cd282dfb00; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:57:13.303Z.