American Airlines Flight 1447
McDonnell Douglas MD-82 · Incident: loss of engine power during takeoff
From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) to Sahand Airport (ACP)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97IA045
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-82
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-82
- 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
- N3507A
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)To Sahand Airport (ACP), ACAPULCO
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Turbine assembly, shaft › Failure
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was departing when a thump was felt with a slight left nose pull, and the pilots aborted the takeoff. The pilots taxied clear of the runway and came to a stop. Several flight crews on the ground reported on the tower frequency that the incident airplane's left engine was on fire. The captain initiated evacuation of the airplane. The Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) personnel reported that the engine fire was confined to the tailpipe area. Turbine blades had separated from the number 4 turbine disk, penetrated the engine case, and subsequently damaged the engine pylon and empennage area. The teardown examination of the engine revealed that the Low Pressure Turbine (LPT) shaft was deformed and fractured into two pieces. Heavy coke deposits were identified on both the outer diameter of the LPT shaft and the inner diameter of the center tube. The two pieces of the LPT shaft were twisted and subjected to 'considerable' permanent deformation. The amount of plastic deformation was indicative of exposure to high temperatures. Additionally, the High Pressure Turbine shaft was found with a (one of three) 4 1/2 bearing stack retention pin missing.
Probable cause
The failure of the low pressure turbine shaft. A factor was the coke build up on the low pressure turbine shaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97IA045
- Event ID
- 20001208X07025
- Case number
- FTW97IA045
- 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. 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: 94bfa2db2e77718eb5675d15f6db7c23f6c5155d496cea37e3c735c6854b0fb8; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:45:00.370Z.