American Airlines Flight 670
Airbus Industrie A-300-600ER · Accident: hard landing
From Toussaint Louverture International Airport (MTPP) to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA177
- 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
Airbus Industrie A-300-600ER
- 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
- N80057
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Toussaint Louverture International Airport (MTPP), PORT-A-PRINCETo John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Check pilot › Supervision, inadequate
- Copilot/second pilot › Flight controls, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The A300 came in for a landing with a captain trainee as the operating pilot and who was receiving initial operating experience. A check airman, who was the pilot-in-command, occupied the right seat and served as first officer. The captain trainee closed the throttles as the airplane neared the runway. The airplane touched down and bounced into the air, and touched down again about 4 seconds later. Just prior to each touchdown, the captain trainee pulled back on the control yoke and the airplane experienced a tail strike upon the second touchdown. DFDR data revealed the initial touchdown was 1.3 Gs and the second touchdown was 2.26 Gs. Interviews disclosed the approach speed was 132 knots plus 5 knots for crosswind. DFDR data recorded the initial touchdown occurred at 129 KCAS, and the second touchdown occurred at 124 KCAS.
Probable cause
improper use of the flight controls by the captain trainee, and inadequate supervision by the check airman.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA177
- Event ID
- 20001212X19345
- Case number
- NYC99LA177
- 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: 1a2fe887e29df8a8fd7e960b97ca9b5035bb60d37038f24739554ae166a93ab3; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:55:11.712Z.