Tower Air Boeing 747-259B accident
Boeing 747-259B · Accident: fire while standing
From Miami International Airport (MIA) to Viracopos International Airport (VCP)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99FA038
- 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 747-259B
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- N621FF
- Operator
- Tower Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami International Airport (MIA)To Viracopos International Airport (VCP), VIRACOPOS
- 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
- Fire
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Leak
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Miami, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The flight was delayed several hours from its originally scheduled departure, because the cargo had not yet been loaded. The first officer and engineer had entered the airplane, and laid down in the bunk beds at the aft end of the upper deck. The captain said he boarded the airplane about 0245, and, '...the cargo loading process was well on its way.' He got busy with determining the fuel load, and other changes in the flight plan. He said, '...suddenly we heard the Ground Crew Call signal...and I was told...the aircraft is on Fire... I ordered my crew to evacuate the aircraft. ' All the flight crew members exited the airplane out the L1, boarding door. An employee of Tower Air, standing on the left side of the airplane, near the nose said he noticed 'sparks' at the lower right hand side of the fuel truck, that was located under the right wing, near the ladder. He could see flames on the lower side of the truck under the right wing. He immediately beeped the flight deck crew who were in the cockpit, and realized they were probably not aware of the urgency, so he decided to run up the stairs and yelled 'Fire.' According to the refueler, he had pumped 6,000 gallons of Jet 'A' into the right wing and was standing on the deck over the pump when he noticed 'white to a light gray' smoke coming from the bottom of the truck's cab, and directly under him. He tried to disconnect the upper deck hoses from the airplane, but before he could he saw flames coming from the same area of the truck. He attempted to put out the fire with a handheld extinguisher, without success. Examination of the fuel truck revealed that there was intense fire damage near the truck's transmission. A hole was found in the fuel line from the pump to the hose, directly above the area of the most intense fire damage. The Metropolitan Dade County Fire Department, report stated, the fire damage on the truck's engine, '...was possibly due to burning jet fuel from fueling operations at the time of the fire...from under the vehicle in the area between the cab and tank...due to severe damage to the area tank/cab, the source of the fuel leak could not be determined.'
Probable cause
a fire that started under the fuel truck's cab from an undetermined fuel leak, resulting in fire damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99FA038
- Event ID
- 20001211X11594
- Case number
- MIA99FA038
- 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: bc25d7714563796aed385801d93fa357139c1d61959452084fadc24d2e80c1e3; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:02:02.657Z.