Air Transport International McDonnell Douglas DC-8-71F incident
McDonnell Douglas DC-8-71F · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From Portland International Airport (PDX) to Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport (TOL)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97IA071
- 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 DC-8-71F
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-8
- 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
- N830BX
- Operator
- Air Transport International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Airport (PDX)To Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport (TOL), Toledo, OH
- 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
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Flt control syst, elevator control cable/rod › Jammed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the process of changing one side of the elevator, maintenance personnel put washers under the head of the bolts used to attach the inboard portion of the elevator drive torque tube to the outboard portion of the tube. Because washers were not called for in the installation, the clearance between the bolt heads and the elevator structure was reduced to a point where, under the flight loads generated during the takeoff roll elevator test, elevator binding occurred. Because of this binding, the takeoff was aborted. It was later determined that washers had been put under the bolt heads during a previous installation, and the mechanics had simply copied what they saw while removing the old elevator. After the incident, maintenance personnel checked the Illustrated Parts Catalog (IPC), which clearly showed that no washers were to be used. They also checked the installation of the elevator on the other side of the aircraft and discovered that it had been installed correctly (no washers under the bolt heads).
Probable cause
improper installation of four attach bolts on the elevator drive torque tube.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97IA071
- Event ID
- 20001208X07627
- Case number
- SEA97IA071
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-03-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bd1705e337364084ee9c65805f43f4bfb06d574ac76536219b7e5b8c97dc086e; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:41:08.845Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N830BX; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.