American Airlines Flight AA699
Airbus Industrie A-300-600R · Accident: hard landing
From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) to V. C. Bird International Airport (ANU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA97LA027
- 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
Airbus Industrie A-300-600R
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-300
- 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
- N41063
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU), San Juan, PRTo V. C. Bird International Airport (ANU), St. Johns
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
- Pilot in command › Rotation, excessive
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The scheduled flight from San Juan to the Antigua (ANU) area was uneventful. During the VOR 07 approach, at about 2,500 feet AGL, the flight maneuvered to avoid TCAS traffic. The runway was in sight. The captain was flying the transport category airplane on final approach with 40 degrees of flaps. At 1,000 feet, on the final approach to landing, the first officer made the company procedural 1,000 foot verbal callout and the captain brought the power above idle. The crew stated that the airplane was slightly high at 1,000 feet and by 500 feet they were 'in the slot' with airspeed about 20 knots above the reference speed of 128 knots and decreasing. Flight recorder data indicated that during the final approach segment from about an altitude of 500 feet to the ground, the airspeed decreased from 143 knots to 135, the pitch attitude increased from 1/2-degree nose up to 9 degrees nose up, the descent rate decreased from 1,700 feet per minute (fpm) to 1,000 fpm, and the flight path angle decreased from 5.8 degrees to 2.7 degrees. The airplane contacted the runway on the main landing gear and bounced, at which time the airplane pitched nose up to about 11 degrees. The tail of the airplane subsequently struck the runway and was substantially damaged. No anomalies with the airplane systems or engines were reported during the investigation. The airline's aircraft operating manual described a 'stabilized approach concept,' but the airline did not provide specific procedures regarding crew actions, or require a go-around, if an approach becomes unstabilized.
Probable cause
The captain failed to establish and maintain a stabilized approach (or perform a go-around), and applied excessive pitch rotation during the subsequent recovery from a bounced landing, resulting in a tail strike. A factor contributing to the accident was the operator's inadequate procedures to address corrective actions if an approach becomes unstabilized.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA97LA027
- Event ID
- 20001208X07395
- Case number
- DCA97LA027
- 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: c1fb50cd41e6d3d2c23fdd80e61f47a67196f6284bc369ba0a4d276d53b8696a; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:42:34.265Z.