Hawaiian Airlines Flight 158
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-51 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during takeoff
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98IA085
- 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 DC-9-51
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N601AP
- Operator
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)To Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA), KONA, HI
- 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
- 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
- Company/operator management › Information unclear(language)
- Company/operator mgmt › Inadequate surveillance of operation
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, slides › Malfunction
- Turbine assembly, shaft bearing › Disintegrated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff the crew heard a loud oscillating sound and aborted takeoff. The tower reported fire was visible from their right engine. The aircraft stopped and the crew initiated the engine fire and emergency evacuation check lists. The forward right service door was opened but the slide did not inflate. The airstairs were then deployed and the occupants deplaned. An inspection revealed an engine bearing cage had disintegrated. The evacuation slide was tested and functioned properly; however, its inflation bottle was found to be empty. While required, the bottle had not been checked that day because of a change in the operations manual that had resulted in confusion as to whose responsibility it was to perform the daily pressure checks. The manual states that it is the captain's responsibility to ensure that the bottle is pressurized but it is not an item on the preflight checklist. The flight crew thought maintenance personnel were performing the checks while maintenance personnel thought the crews were checking the bottles. The bottles have a history of sometimes losing pressure over time.
Probable cause
the disintegration of the No. 6 bearing in the No. 2 engine which resulted in an aborted takeoff. In addition, the malfunction of the slide in the right forward service door was the result of a faulty seal in the inflation system. The inflation gauge had not been checked that day due to confusion resulting from a change in the operations manual. The change in the language made it unclear as to whose responsibility it was to check the inflation gauge. The operator did not verify that the change was being properly implemented after it had been made effective.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98IA085
- Event ID
- 20001211X09566
- Case number
- LAX98IA085
- 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: d11b992cdbe04367e92b79c2899ad849458000ca425e9d71f0597d91fb1873e2; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:13:40.727Z.