United Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC 10-10 incident
McDonnell Douglas DC 10-10 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From an unrecorded airport to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX92IA397
- 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
McDonnell Douglas DC 10-10
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-10
- 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
- N1845U
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole (KOA), KONA, HI
- 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 › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A MCDONNELL DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT COMPANY DC 10 SERIES 10 AIRCRAFT EXPERIENCED AN UNCONTAINED FAILURE OF THE NUMBER 1 ENGINE WHILE IN THE CRUISE CLIMB. THE ENGINE HAD SUSTAINED AN UNCONTAINED FAILURE OF THE 14TH THROUGH 16TH STAGE COMPRESSOR SPOOL. ABOUT 11 YEARS BEFORE THE INCIDENT, THE SPOOL WAS DAMAGED BEYOND MAINTENANCE MANUAL LIMITS. THE DAMAGE CONSISTED OF A 360 DEGREE RUB ON THE AFT RIM SURFACE (SURFACE Q) OF THE 16TH STAGE COMPRESSOR. THE SPOOL WAS PLACED IN STORAGE FOR FIVE YEARS AND THEN RETURNED TO SERVICE AFTER BEING REPAIRED. FLIGHT PROFILE STRESSES WERE ANALYZED BY ENGINE MANUFACTURER. ACCORDING TO THE ENGINE MANUFACTURER, PEAK STRESSES IN THE AFT RIM REGION OR SURFACE Q OCCUR AT THE SAME TIME IN THE FLIGHT PROFILE AS THE UNCONTAINED FAILURE.
Probable cause
A FRACTURED COMPRESSOR ASSEMBLY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX92IA397
- Event ID
- 20001211X15710
- Case number
- LAX92IA397
- 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: 082234119a50f5243331ed64eea4079435288d93f2c4a26a4efd13aec8b930fa; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:43:49.744Z.