Delta Air Lines Flight 1885
Lockheed L-1011-385-1 L-1011-385 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during pushback
From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA129
- 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
Lockheed L-1011-385-1 L-1011-385
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed L-1011
- 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
- N723DA
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)To Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- 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
- Pushback/towing
- 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, inspection, inadequate
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, galley/personnel lift › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight attendant was in the elevator when it dropped to the galley level, and she received a fractured ankle. The elevator was operated by a drive shaft with two co-located shafts. The inner shaft was located inside the secondary shaft. Examination of the elevator lift mechanism revealed that the primary shaft had failed in rotating-bending fatigue. The secondary shaft failure originated from a fatigue crack in a sharp corner of the teeth. Corrosion was found on the surface of the crack. The shafts were inspected at 300-hour intervals, and had last been inspected 33 hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the failure of the primary and secondary elevator driveshafts, and the failure of maintenance personnel to detect the failure of the primary shaft during scheduled inspections.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA129
- Event ID
- 20001208X08233
- Case number
- NYC97LA129
- 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 1997-06-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c57b3ad9a34c867014ac84abbc63f3beb2e2c19ba9ed45ff0f8448d3b2500c11; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:30:15.148Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N723DA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.