American Airlines Flight 230
McDonnell Douglas MD-82 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97IA170
- 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
- N470AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS)To Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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 › Undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff/initial climb, the aircraft sustained a contained failure of the left engine turbine section, as well as a tail pipe fire. The flightcrew returned to the airport, made a successful landing, and stopped on the runway, where an evacuation was initiated. The flight deck crew gave the evacuation command and instructed the flight attendants to 'use the right side exits only.' A short time later, Flight 230 asked the tower 'how do I correspond with the folks in the trucks and make sure what's going on with the left engine . . .' The controller replied, 'you go to one two four point four that's the ground control frequency and airport forty six is in charge of the fire rescue.' Review of the transcripts revealed that the crew experienced difficulty in establishing radio contact with the airport CFR vehicles. Postincident engine teardown revealed considerable damage of the stage 1 to stage 4 turbine blades. The 1st stage NGV was found with the outer buttress aft flow guide (angel wing) completely missing. The 1T blade damage was consistent with damage caused by liberated angel wing hardware; however, determination of the initial fracture mode was not possible.
Probable cause
an undetermined failure in the #1 (left) engine turbine assembly, which resulted in a fracture of the first stage nozzle guide vane (NGV) and subsequent damage to the turbine blades.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97IA170
- Event ID
- 20001208X07740
- Case number
- LAX97IA170
- 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: 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: 7a56000456598f1a914a57b03e98c642aca664b79421796140d814a0fe51f0c9; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:36:44.504Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N470AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.