United Airlines Flight 1197
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From DVX to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98IA158
- 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-10-10
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-10
- 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
- N1836U
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DVXTo Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WA
- 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 › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on takeoff roll, the left number 2 main tire tread separated from the casing. Part of the tire went through the number one engine and another portion punctured the left wing. The crew operated the number one engine at reduced power due to vibration and after dumping fuel returned to the departure airport. A precautionary landing was performed and the passengers were deplaned and bussed to the terminal. Aircraft damage was foreign object damage to the number one engine and holes in the lower wing skin adjacent to the left main landing gear wheel well. Laboratory examination of the tire provided evidence that the failure was due to fatigue due to overheat caused by multiple retreading of the tire.
Probable cause
The total failure of one main landing gear tire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98IA158
- Event ID
- 20001211X09663
- Case number
- FTW98IA158
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-03-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5b41d837efdf5fe849efb07abdaf712c3888517587c94aa95ee34343e30a3b61; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:11:34.672Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N1836U; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, UALA.