Air South Airlines Flight 904
Boeing 737-200 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96LA108
- 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 737-200
- 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
- EICLK
- Operator
- Air South Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville International Airport (JAX)To Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service bulletin/letter, not complied with
- Compressor assembly, forward fan › Foreign object damage
- Landing light(s) › Cracked
- Landing light(s) › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff the nose gear taxi light separated from the nose landing gear when the aluminum support bracket failed. The debris from the nose gear taxi light was ingested by both engines causing damage to the fan sections. The nose gear taxi light assembly is manufactured by Grimes Aerospace Company. In June 1992 Grimes began offering a stainless steel support bracket to replace the aluminum support bracket. In service history showed that the aluminum support bracket was cracking due to damage from the nose gear tow bar during towing operations. The stainless steel bracket is resistant to this damage. The change to the new stainless steel bracket was the subject of Grimes Service Bulletins in 1992 and 1993, and a Boeing Service Letter in 1994.
Probable cause
failure of the nose gear taxi light support bracket due to in service damage, which resulted in debris being ingested by the engines. Contributing to the accident was the failure of company maintenance personnel to comply with a Grimes Service Bulletin and a Boeing Service Letter which recommended changing the nose gear taxi light support bracket to an improved design.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96LA108
- Event ID
- 20001208X05463
- Case number
- MIA96LA108
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-03-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac059a98af6efe6e194995848296a309feab7ff5d1c8e712362c93658f85f973; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:52:37.573Z.