Fine Airlines Douglas DC-8-51 incident
Douglas DC-8-51 · Incident while taxiing
From Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO) to Laredo International Airport (LRD)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98IA196
- 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
Douglas DC-8-51
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-8
- 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
- N507DC
- Operator
- Fine Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO)To Laredo International Airport (LRD), Laredo, TX
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Flightcrew › Physical impairment
- Hazardous material › Fumes
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While taxiing to takeoff, all four occupants of the DC-8 freighter became short of breath. They donned oxygen masks, and the flight returned to the ramp. Cargo included 960 pounds of dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) in 198 separate 4.85-pound blocks, used as a refrigerant for frozen shrimp. Sublimation of dry ice to the gaseous state occurs constantly. When the carbon dioxide (CO2) gas concentration reaches 0.5% shortness of breath may occur, at 2%, depth of respiration increases, and above 4%, breathing becomes rapid and very deep. At sea level and 70 degrees F (incident conditions were 23 feet msl and 66 degrees F), 0.4 pounds of CO2 gas in the cockpit of a DC-8 produces a 0.5% concentration and 3.3 pounds produces a 4% concentration. In 10 minutes, at sublimation rates of 1% and 14% per hour, 960 pounds of dry ice produces 1.6 and 22.4 pounds of CO2 gas, respectively. The 1% sublimation rate is commonly used when calculating amounts of dry ice that can safely be carried on aircraft; however, it was determined for bulk shipments of dry ice and may not be applicable to dry ice used as a refrigerant. The 14% rate was determined using a single 5 pound block of ice.
Probable cause
The flightcrew experienced physical impairment resulting from an accumulation in the cockpit of carbon dioxide fumes produced by dry ice, a hazardous material, carried in the main cargo compartment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98IA196
- Event ID
- 20001211X09850
- Case number
- FTW98IA196
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-04-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 73781c2a468010771d1c1da95359c6a98209265a20db3a16e7eb31b67fc8ece4; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:10:15.699Z.