Northwest Airlines Boeing 747-200 incident
Boeing 747-200 · Incident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Narita International Airport (NRT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC93IA188
- 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
Boeing 747-200
- 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
- N629US
- Operator
- Northwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Narita International Airport (NRT), Tokyo, JAPAN
- 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 · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Compressor assembly, forward fan › Foreign object damage
- Object › Bird(s)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A 28 OUNCE DUCK WAS INGESTED INTO A JT9 TURBOFAN ENGINE OF A B747 ON TAKEOFF, IMPACTING AND BREAKING THE 10 PLY FIBERGLASS FAN SPINNER. DOWNSTREAM ENGINE DESTRUCTION FOLLOWED. ENGINE MANUFACTURE AND FAA WAS AWARE OF A NUMBER OF PREVIOUS BIRD-STRIKE FAILURES WITH THIS SPINNER. NEW AND STRONGER 20 PLY SPINNERS ARE BEING PHASED IN; HOWEVER, THIN SPINNERS ARE STILL IN USE ON JT9 ENGINES IN COMMERCIAL SERVICE.
Probable cause
FOREIGN OBJECT DAMAGE TO THE COMPRESSOR FORWARD FAN ASSEMBLY AS A RESULT OF THE INGESTION OF A BIRD.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC93IA188
- Event ID
- 20001211X13284
- Case number
- ANC93IA188
- 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: 771b8eb8dd1970d7fa51431a7ede94bd1ca34c671fd53b8d3ca91e45b9fc5baa; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:28:12.525Z.