American Airlines Flight 915
Airbus Industrie A-300-605R · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From an unrecorded airport to Miami International Airport (MIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94IA018
- 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
Airbus Industrie A-300-605R
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A-300
- 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
- N41063
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Miami International Airport (MIA), Miami, FL
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 (mechanical 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
- Compressor assembly, rotor disc › Separation
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Los Angeles, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
FOLLOWING TAKEOFF, THE AIRPLANE WAS CLIMBING THROUGH 6,200 FEET MSL OVER THE OCEAN WHEN THE CREW HEARD A LOUD BANG AND THE NUMBER ONE ENGINE FIRE ANNUNCIATOR LIGHT ILLUMINATED. THE ENGINE POWER DECREASED TO ZERO. THE ENGINE WAS SECURED AND THE FLIGHT LANDED WITHOUT FURTHER PROBLEM AT THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT. THERE WAS NO FIRE AND THE PASSENGERS DISEMBARKED AT THE TERMINAL GATE. EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT THE ENGINE HAD SUSTAINED AN UNCONTAINED FAILURE OF THE HIGH PRESSURE COMPRESSOR. THE 6TH STAGE DISK OF THE 3-TO-9 COMPRESSOR SPOOL WAS MISSING COMPLETELY FROM THE ENGINE. THE AIRPLANE RECEIVED MINOR DAMAGE. SIMILAR DISK FAILURES HAVE BEEN ATTRIBUTED TO A PHENOMENON KNOWN AS DWELL TIME FATIGUE. THIS MAY OCCUR WHEN TITANIUM CRYSTALS FORM INTO MICROSTRUCTURE COLONIES DURING THE FORGING AND MANUFACTURING PROCESS. THE DISK HAS NOT BEEN RECOVERED AND THE EXACT FAILURE MODE HAS NOT BEEN DETERMINED.
Probable cause
a separation of the number 6 stage high pressure compressor disk for an undetermined reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94IA018
- Event ID
- 20001211X13583
- Case number
- LAX94IA018
- 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: 883081bf66743b753300348000c39c4c412af92f1a8253e69a846673ed431331; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:27:10.869Z.