Delta Air Lines Boeing 767-332 accident
Boeing 767-332 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while taxiing
From Portland International Airport (PDX) to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA062
- 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
- Accident
- 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 767-332
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N125DL
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Airport (PDX)To Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CA
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Passenger › Evacuation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the Boeing 767 was taxiing for departure, the crew of another aircraft reported that there was smoke and flames coming from the Boeing 767 APU exhaust. The crew of the Boeing 767 shut down the APU and began coordinating with dispatch for a return to the gate. The crew was then directed by the tower to hold their position and to shut down their engines. Soon thereafter, the tower advised the crew that the Fire Marshall had called for the aircraft to be evacuated because there was still smoke coming from the APU exhaust. The aircraft was evacuated using the evacuation slides at the door exits. One passenger received serious injuries during the evacuation. An inspection of the APU showed that the fuel control unit and the gearbox shutoff valve needed to be replaced. Once those units were replaced, the APU was test run with no further discrepancies noted.
Probable cause
the passenger's unsuccessful (improper) evacuation of the aircraft. The malfunctioning APU was a related factor in that it torched and produced smoke, due to a faulty fuel control unit and/or gearbox shutoff valve, thereby prompting an emergency evacuation of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA062
- Event ID
- 20001208X05330
- Case number
- SEA96LA062
- 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: aebd0314f4e33ba21253ac0d9d141ea4f0c5e690e1ff26c812053709ffb9b5cd; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:53:44.253Z.