Northwest Airlines Flight 1821
Airbus Industrie A-320-212 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) to Mexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98IA095
- 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 A-320-212
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-320
- 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
- N341NW
- Operator
- Northwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW), Detroit, MITo Mexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX), Mexico City
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Fuel system, filter › Blocked(total)
- Fuel system, nozzle › Blocked(partial)
- Fuel system, pump › Worn
- Manufacturer › Material inadequate
- Turbine assembly, casing › Burned
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Memphis, TN, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While en route from Detroit to Mexico City , the flightcrew received a warning message from the Engine Condition and Monitoring System (ECAS) that the No. 1 fuel filter was clogged. The flight was subsequently diverted to Memphis for a precautionary landing. Post-landing examination of the engine revealed a 4-inch long (circumferential) by 1-inch wide (axial) burn-through in the low pressure turbine case in the plane of the 2nd stage turbine stators at the 11 o'clock location. The examination of the fuel pump filter revealed the presence of a bronze-colored material. The fuel nozzles were reported to have bronze-colored material in the nozzle jets. Records show that the fuel pump had operated 17,208 hours time since new and 6,972 cycles since new. The disassembly of the pump revealed the pump housing had gear pocket milling. The fixed and driven bearings, which are made of bronze, were worn. The fuel pump's filter bypass valve was found to have bronze-colored particles on both sides of the valve. The fuel pump's four bearings were made of bronze and all four bearings exhibited wear and material loss.
Probable cause
the inadequate (bronze) material used by the fuel pump's manufacturer, which wore and ultimately blocked the fuel filter bypass and partially blocked the fuel nozzles, causing the fuel spray to burn through the low pressure turbine case.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98IA095
- Event ID
- 20001211X09522
- Case number
- CHI98IA095
- 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: df6d1a42c4c9b29f625c4ab46cf3c8a3b0ba94f95db79243cf85e6f8348b4230; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:13:28.539Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N341NW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, NWAA.