American Airlines Boeing 727-223 incident
Boeing 727-223 · Incident: decompression en route
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW88IA097
- 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 727-223
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N800AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, PA
- 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
- Decompression
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Fuselage, floor › Cracked
- Fuselage, floor › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PIC MADE AN UNSCHEDULED LANDING FOLLOWING DECOMPRESSION AT 30,000 FEET. THE AIRCRAFT HAD BEEN WRITTEN UP BY FLIGHTCREWS NUMEROUS TIMES BETWEEN MAY 7 AND MAY 9 FOR PRESSURIZATION PROBLEMS. PRESSURE BULKHEAD AT STATION 940 IN THE RIGHT WHEEL WELL CRACKED 15 1/2 INCHES DUE TO FATIGUE. AIRCRAFT HAD FLOWN 55,437 HOURS AND HAD 39,983 CYCLES AT THE TIME OF DECOMPRESSION, ONE OF THE HIGHEST HRS AND CYCLES IN THE AMERICAN FLEET. BOEING AIRCRAFT ISSUED A SERVICE BULLETIN DATED MAY 4, 1979 WHICH WAS NOT COMPLIED WITH THAT ADDRESSED THE ISSUE OF BEAD CRACKING IN THE 940 STATION WHEEL WELL PANEL.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW88IA097
- Event ID
- 20001213X25692
- Case number
- FTW88IA097
- 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. 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: c8697df1a38a569f9249a69c7a0396d66ad3ba85e7032e1ae52973891c30341c; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:22:32.695Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N800AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.