American Airlines Flight 90
Boeing 777-223ER · Incident during takeoff
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to London Heathrow Airport (LHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00IA125
- 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
Boeing 777-223ER
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- N779AN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)To London Heathrow Airport (LHR), London
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Atc personnel(lcl/gnd/clnc) › Atc clearance, improper
- Flightcrew › Notams, not detected
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed from a closed runway. No injuries were reported. The first officer's stated, "After normal preflight and gate departure. We advised metering that we were ready for taxi and would prefer 32R if available. Ground gave us clearance to taxi to 32R. Tower first had us hold short and then position and hold awaiting the departure of two aircraft from intersecting runways. We were then cleared for takeoff." The airport had issued a runway closure NOTAM. The flight's dispatch contained the NOTAM. The dispatch listed the runway status as open. ATIS did not list the runway closure. A FAA recommendation stated, "Add the suggestion to our list of good operating procedures that closure strips should not be used as departure strip runway separators. Closure strips should be placed and left in a prominent position on the podiums. ... In addition to Locals and Grounds receiving runway closure strips, both Flight Data and Ground Metering should have closure strips as well. ... Revise Flight Data, Clearance Delivery, and Ground Metering positions relief checklists to include runway closure information. Brief operational personnel that runway closures must be broadcast on the ATIS. Brief operational personnel that pilots must be informed that a runway is closed when it is requested for takeoff/landing. Brief operational supervisors of the requirement to ensure ATIS broadcasts are correct and contain pertinent information."
Probable cause
the flightcrew not detecting the runway closure NOTAM and the Air Traffic Control personnel on the metering, ground, and local positions giving an improper clearance to taxi to a closed runway. Factors were the closed runway, ATIS information not issued by Air Traffic Control personnel, and insufficiently defined procedures of disseminating pertinent safety of flight information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00IA125
- Event ID
- 20001212X20771
- Case number
- CHI00IA125
- 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: investigation status, damage. 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: aa5120ff425f2b312e53b974a2d8bb74a233b4539e26dbb8f7cf92896b9b5d17; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:39:31.449Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N779AN; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.