Northwest Airlines Flight 211
Airbus Industrie A-320-211 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97IA034
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Airbus Industrie A-320-211
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-320
- 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
- N310NW
- Operator
- Northwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW)
- 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
- 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
- Flt control syst, load feel › Movement restricted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the captain applied rudder over the runway threshold to compensate for a crosswind, he noted that the rudder pedals 'were locked in the neutral position.' He used slight banking to keep the airplane on runway centerline through touchdown, and differential braking and nosewheel steering to stay on runway centerline after touchdown. Shortly after exiting the runway, the rudder became free and moved normally. Examination of the rudder autopilot artificial feel unit revealed that the radial play of the autopilot mode engagement/disengagement lever was not sufficient. This introduced higher friction in the bearing of the lever, resulting in an increased operating force. In this case, the back driving force was not able to rotate the lever and disengage the autopilot mode. A review of all service bulletins (SBs) covering the A320 rudder system revealed an Airbus Industrie SB, dated March 21, 1992, which addressed this condition, and introduced a new modified lever with a larger radial play of the bearing to eliminate the problem. The A320, N310NW, did not have this modification at the time of the incident.
Probable cause
restricted movement of the autopilot mode engagement/disengagement lever bearing in the rudder artificial feel and trim unit. A factor relating to this incident was: company management not implementing the respective service bulletin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97IA034
- Event ID
- 20001208X07004
- Case number
- CHI97IA034
- 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: 63a197b7bd90999e0f3d61d02525ff080cdf15928710d81f28aa006d63bcaa28; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:44:56.579Z.