TWA Lockheed L-1011-100 accident
Lockheed L-1011-100 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96FA174
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Lockheed L-1011-100
- 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
- N31031
- Operator
- TWA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NVTo John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
- Flightcrew › Checklist, not followed
- Flightcrew › Monitoring, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During arrival, the flight (flt) received vectors for ILS runway (rwy) 4R approach (apch). Before reaching final apch fix, visibility went below minimums for rwy 4R, & flt was offered ILS rwy 4L apch, which was still above minimums. Captain accepted, & 1st officer (F/O), who was flying the aircraft (acft), transitioned to 4L. On final apch, acft passed thru 500' AGL at 151 KCAS with throttles near idle. It continued decelerating to reference landing speed. During computer-driven, auto-land flare, acft nose rotated up, & acft's tail struck rwy. The operator's (oper's) procedures required mandatory go-around unless apch was stabilized at 500'. The crew reported all checklists had been completed; however, apch charts for rwy 4L were not reviewed, required call outs were not remembered as given by all crewmembers, & altimeter bugs remained set for runway 4R. DFDR data revealed the wing leading edge slats had not extended with the flaps. A green light on the pilot's instrument panel & 14 green lights & a gauge on the flt engineer's (F/E's) panel were not used to verify slat extension. Oper's expanded landing checklist did not require F/E to use gauge to verify slat extension. Oper's manuals did not list possibility of a "slat lock," which would not activate any warning lights or aural warnings. Maintenance records revealed slats had locked 12 times in preceding 2 yrs. Inspection methods provided by Lockheed & adopted by the oper, did not adequately specify how to check slat drive system for slack.
Probable cause
failure of the flight crew to complete the published checklist and to adequately cross-check the actions of each other, which resulted in their failure to detect that the leading edge slats had not extended and led to the aircraft's tail contacting the runway during the computer-driven, auto-land flare for landing. Factors related to the accident were: the manufacturer's inadequate inspection procedures for the slat drive system; and the operator's inadequate checklist, which did not include having the flight engineer monitor the double needle slat gauge.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96FA174
- Event ID
- 20001208X06595
- Case number
- NYC96FA174
- 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: 8c672f0eff2401ccefb09f0945ae3ba005dfe32218f5935eb9a6449709011566; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:47:11.742Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N31031; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.