American Airlines Flight 346
McDonnell Douglas MD-80 · Accident: wheels up landing
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA009
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-80
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-80
- 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
- N244AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo LaGuardia Airport (LGA), FLUSHING, 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
- Landing
- 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
- Wheels up landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Landing gear, nose gear assembly › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was inbound to land, when the flight crew observed an unsafe nose gear indication. The crew was unable to confirm that the gear was down, and diverted to Runway 31R at JFK. The airplane landed on the runway, with the nose gear retracted, and an emergency evacuation was performed. Examination of the wreckage revealed the nose landing gear upper lock link was fractured into two pieces. The linkage jammed against the shock strut structure, preventing extension of the strut. According to the airplane manufacturer, the nose landing gear upper lock link failed due to fatigue. It was made from aluminum plating. Originally, all the links were made from forged aluminum. Then, the company used plated aluminum because it weighed less. Although both types of lock links were of the same strength, the aluminum plating fatigued sooner than the forged links. After the accident, the company replaced all aluminum plated upper lock links with forged ones.
Probable cause
Failure of the nose landing gear upper lock link.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA009
- Event ID
- 20001208X06963
- Case number
- NYC97LA009
- 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 1996-10-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 29b96185d5f5773ed7c0bf4281852c4afc02cad86aee3e3add53e2f70bbd594f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:45:54.183Z.