American Airlines Flight 1340
Boeing 727-223 · Accident: uncontrolled altitude deviation on approach
From Kansas City International Airport (MCI) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA98MA023
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-223
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N845AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kansas City International Airport (MCI), Kansas City, MOTo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, IL
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Uncontrolled altitude deviation
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The full report for NTSB Report Number AAB-01-01 is available at www.ntsb.gov/publictn/publictn.htm. On February 9, 1998, about 0954 central standard time (CST), a Boeing 727-223 (727), N845AA, operated by American Airlines as flight 1340, impacted the ground short of the runway 14R threshold at Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) while conducting a Category II (CAT II) instrument landing system (ILS) coupled approach. Twenty-two passengers and one flight attendant received minor injuries, and the airplane was substantially damaged. The airplane, being operated by American Airlines as a scheduled domestic passenger flight under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 121, with 116 passengers, 3 flight crewmembers, and 3 flight attendants on board, was destined for Chicago, Illinois, from Kansas City International Airport (MCI), Kansas City, Missouri. Daylight instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
the failure of the flight crew to maintain a proper pitch attitude for a successful landing or go-around. Contributing to the accident were the divergent pitch oscillations of the airplane, which occurred during the final approach and were the result of an improper autopilot desensitization rate.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA98MA023
- Event ID
- 20001211X09531
- Case number
- DCA98MA023
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (6)
- 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: 48a446d1fa86549fcfac132f209e513dd04b121dd0da9216486dccf2ff1b35a4; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:13:46.662Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N845AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure, destination. The narrative states the flight departed "from Kansas City International Airport (MCI), Kansas City, Missouri"; MCI is in Missouri, not Kansas. The narrative states the flight "was destined for Chicago, Illinois" and impacted short of runway 14R at "Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)".