Pan American World Airways, in Flight 6
Airbus Industrie A300 B4-203 A300 B4-20 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97IA300
- 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
Airbus Industrie A300 B4-203 A300 B4-20
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A300
- 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
- N862PA
- Operator
- Pan American World Airways, in
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)To John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Jamaica, NY
- 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 · roll/run
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Landing gear, tire › Ingested
- Landing gear, tire › Loss, partial
- Landing gear, tire › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After feeling a vibration in the aircraft during the takeoff roll, the cockpit crew heard a loud bang and the right-hand (number 2) engine failed. The captain rejected the takeoff and stopped the airplane on the remaining runway. Postincident examination revealed that the tire tread was absent from the number 3 tire on the right-hand main landing gear. One piece of black rubber resembling the tire tread was found lodged in the fan outlet guide vanes. Black smearing marks were observed on several of the fan blades and bent stator vanes of the engine, which also resembled the tire tread material. There was substantial damage to the engine and minor airframe damage.
Probable cause
Separation of the landing gear tire tread and subsequent ingestion of the tread into the intake of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97IA300
- Event ID
- 20001208X08665
- Case number
- LAX97IA300
- 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: fc30bc46efb17b84d7e27e83cbccde242e2b80c88f25fadca9f804ab9b8e57c5; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:25:16.520Z.