FedEx Flight 1700
McDonnell Douglas MD-11F · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Indianapolis International Airport (IND) to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA005
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-11F
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-11
- 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
- N606FE
- Operator
- FedEx
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Indianapolis International Airport (IND), Indianapolis, INTo Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Landing gear › Failure
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Newark, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During the landing roll, the center landing gear (CLG) on the MD-11 failed in a rearward direction. The lugs on the upper attach point of the lower drag brace on the CLG failed, the landing gear retraction cylinder was pulled apart, and hydraulic fluid was lost in the #3 hydraulic system. Metallurgical examination of the failed lug found evidence of overload. The DFDR recorded a momentary peak in vertical and longitudinal accelerations, about 5.75 seconds after main landing gear touchdown, and 2.5 seconds after nose wheel touchdown. The vertical acceleration momentarily reduced, and the longitudinal acceleration momentarily increased. According to McDonnell-Douglas, the CLG was capable of entering a divergent, longitudinal oscillation, which could fail the lower drag brace lugs. There were five prior documented events that were identical. After the first three events, McDonnell-Douglas duplicated it twice again, using instrumented airplanes. They subsequently issued a service bulletin for modifications to the CLG brakes and anti-skid system. The accident airplane had these modifications. Additional testing by the operator to determine the loads on the CLG during landing did not find any high loads, and the cause of the CLG oscillation was not determined.
Probable cause
A divergent, longitudinal oscillation of undetermined origin on the center landing gear, which caused a failure of the center landing gear lower drag brace during landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA005
- Event ID
- 20001212X20029
- Case number
- NYC00LA005
- 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: 3a69996d36f835a073115ce068c6bb31d8d6fc4dba9dbfa68040c921a1fcb6ff; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:52:24.145Z.