Flight 516 · McDonnell Douglas MD-83
McDonnell Douglas MD-83 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Harry Reid International Airport (KLAS) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (KCOS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97IA209
- 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-83
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-83
- 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
- N875RA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (KLAS), NVTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (KCOS), Colorado Springs, CO
- 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
- Fluid, oil › Starvation
- Lubricating system, oil port/passage, internal › Obstructed
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, major repair, improper
- Turbine assembly › Failure
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Las Vegas, NV, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft experienced an uncontained left engine failure during the initial climb after takeoff. The flight returned to the airport, and an uneventful landing was made. The engine was removed and returned to the repair facility that performed major repairs just 76.9 flight hours prior. During the teardown examination, the No. 5 bearing inner race retaining nut oil supply holes were found plugged. According to the Pratt and Whitney Standard Practices Manual, the procedure for the plating of silver over steel specified that the No. 5 bearing race should have been grit blasted to remove old plating per Service Process Operations Procedure (SPOP) 10, which specified use of PMC 3052-9 aluminum oxide grit. The SPOP consumable materials list identified PMC 3052-9 as 500 aluminum oxide grit. The actual processing of the nut included grit blasting with 120 grit aluminum oxide, contrary to P&W recommendation to use 200 to 500 aluminum grit oxide media or glass beads. The nut was to be cleaned and flushed after the blasting.
Probable cause
the maintenance/overhaul facility's improper repair, which led to obstructed oil supply hole(s) at the #5 bearing inner race, then oil starvation and subsequent uncontained engine failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97IA209
- Event ID
- 20001208X08165
- Case number
- LAX97IA209
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-06-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b23491622303d018253f160541d3a41695766ff6f51b5e74b9d7ba213135642d; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:30:56.813Z.