Trans World Airlines Flight 840
Lockheed L-1011-385-1 L-1011-385 · Incident en route
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96IA240
- 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
Lockheed L-1011-385-1 L-1011-385
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed L-1011
- 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
- N11004
- Operator
- Trans World Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), NEW YORK, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Pilot in command › Physical impairment(other cardiovascular)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While cruising during a scheduled domestic flight, the captain began experiencing chest pain. The flight diverted to Denver, where the first officer made an uneventful landing and the captain taxied the aircraft to the gate (the L-1011 was not equipped with nose wheel steering on the first officer's side). The captain was transported to a medical facility. According to emergency room records, the captain had no history of cardiovascular disease. He reported he had been experiencing intermittent retrosternal chest pain since the previous day which was becoming more continuous with radiation to his left jaw and left arm. The clinical impression of the attending physician was chest pain with possible unstable angina, although his electrocardiogram (EKG) was normal.
Probable cause
physical impairment of the captain due to a probable cardiac event.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96IA240
- Event ID
- 20001208X05962
- Case number
- FTW96IA240
- 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, 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: 7587dc3faaa4cf86f9d319e796efd62c378142b0649932ef0dc185b445d7d0f9; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:49:54.338Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N11004; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, TWAA.