American International Airways McDonnell Douglas DC-8-63F accident
McDonnell Douglas DC-8-63F · Accident during takeoff
From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA046
- 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 DC-8-63F
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-8
- 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
- N811CK
- Operator
- American International Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)To Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AK
- 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
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Flight engineer › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before the accident flight, company maintenance personnel performed work on all four of the aircraft's engine thrust reversers. One mechanic working on the thrust reversers went off-shift before closing the number 2 cowl, and asked another mechanic to close the cowl for him. The second mechanic subsequently lowered the number 1 and 2 cowl doors but was unable to secure and lock them. He reported to mechanics on the next shift that all four engine cowls needed to be secured, and annotated this in the shift turnover log. When mechanics from the next shift arrived to close the cowls, they observed the number 1 and 2 cowls closed but did not review the shift turnover log and did not check to ensure the number 1 and 2 cowls were latched. The flight engineer also failed to detect the unlatched cowls on his preflight inspection, despite detailed procedures in the company flight operations manual for preflight inspection of the cowls (including ensuring they are latched.) The flight crew subsequently initiated a takeoff with the number 1 and 2 engine cowls unsecured. The number 1 and 2 cowls departed the aircraft during, and shortly after, takeoff, substantially damaging the aircraft's left wing and left horizontal stabilizer. The flight subsequently returned to the departure airport and landed without further incident.
Probable cause
Inadequate inspection of the number 1 and 2 engine cowls by company maintenance personnel and inadequate preflight inspection by the flight engineer, resulting in unsecured cowls separating from the aircraft during takeoff. A factor was unsecured number 1 and 2 engine cowls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA046
- Event ID
- 20001212X20571
- Case number
- SEA00LA046
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-02-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b7c67d783328e0e13634b93035fad3c39c1d251d27cd30b9ae374ad522cf1edc; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:48:42.446Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N811CK; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.