American Airlines Flight 1625
Boeing 727-227 · Accident: fire while standing
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to MKC · Kansas City, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA127
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-227
- 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
- N722AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)To MKC · Kansas City, KS
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) start-up
- 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
- Fire
- 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
- Passenger › Evacuation, initiated
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The cockpit crew was in the process of starting the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) when passengers saw flames coming from the right engine. A passenger was heard to scream 'Fire' at which time the uncommanded evacuation was initiated by the passengers. The captain attempted to calm the passengers with a PA announcement. Passengers exited the airplane via the over wing exit, the rear airstair door, and the main entry door onto the jet bridge. A ten year old boy received a broken arm and two other passengers received minor leg and ankle injuries as they jumped off the wing.
Probable cause
the passenger initiated evacuation of the airplane. A factor was the auxiliary power unit fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA127
- Event ID
- 20001211X09821
- Case number
- CHI98LA127
- 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 1998-04-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0cb81e303716fb75c1fc49d6624517814dcfb57784df28ea0ed7fbd456dd78d6; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:10:33.373Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N722AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.