Delta Air Lines McDonnell Douglas MD-11 incident
McDonnell Douglas MD-11 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure while standing
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99IA015
- 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
- Unknown
McDonnell Douglas MD-11
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-11
- 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
- N811DE
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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) not operating
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, not complied with
- Electrical system, circuit breaker › Not safetied
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Cut/severed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Atlanta, GA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During the trip check, airport customer service personnel informed a mechanic that one of the center cargo bay longitudinal spring-lift power drive unit (PDU) powered rollers was inoperative and in the 'up' position. A mechanic, removed the powered rollers from the cargo compartment and did not have the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 Maintenance Manual in his possession at the time. The mechanic, did not open the circuit breaker for the cargo control unit (CCU) that controls the operation of the powered rollers, nor did he tag the system out of service as stipulated in the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 Maintenance Manual. While the mechanic was away from the airplane obtaining a new powered roller, the airport customer service had a crew change. The new crew, unaware that the powered roller cannon plug had been left on the floor of the cargo compartment, began loading cargo bins. The cannon plug was run over and its connecting wires cut by the cargo bins. A Delta technician started the airplane's auxiliary power unit (APU) to provide electrical power to the airplane. Other Delta technicians who were servicing the cabin observed smoke and 4 to 6 inch flames behind a floor vent of the main passenger cabin at row 12. The fire was subsequently extinguished.
Probable cause
Failure of the Company's maintenance personnel to follow the aircraft's maintenance manual which resulted in a cargo bin fire. Contributing to the severity of the incident was the failure of the mechanic to safety the circuit breaker, and the cut/severed electrical wiring.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99IA015
- Event ID
- 20001211X11362
- Case number
- ATL99IA015
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-11-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 406464b82c9f166e7b6cc09871938ef4340bea13749ebcf147733a5716c43e47; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:02:48.705Z.