Eastern Air Lines Boeing 727-25 incident
Boeing 727-25 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA89IA016
- 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 727-25
- 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
- N8148N
- Operator
- Eastern Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC), Rochester, NYTo Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, major repair, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Morgantown, WV, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
FUSELAGE SKIN 'FLAPPED' OPEN BETWEEN BODY STATIONS 1090 AND 1110 AND PEELED DOWNWARD FROM STRINGER #4 LEFT TO STRINGER #5 LEFT. A SCRATCH OR SCRIBE MARK WAS CO-LOCATED WITH THE LONGITUDINAL CRACK ALONG STRINGER #4. THE AREA OF DAMAGE WAS LOCATED ON THE AFT UPPER SIDE, FWD OF THE INLET FOR THE #2 ENGINE. THE CRACK HAD INITIATED AT MULTIPLE ORIGINS ALONG THE SCORE MARK AND HAD GROWN BY FATIGUE THROUGH THE THICKNESS OF THE MATERIAL. A STRIATION COUNT FOUND THAT BETWEEN 3360 AND 5040 CYCLES OF FATIGUE PROGRESSION WERE PRESENT. THE SCRATCH/SCORE WAS MADE BY USE OF MARKING TOOLS DURING A REPAIR PROCESS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA89IA016
- Event ID
- 20001213X27401
- Case number
- DCA89IA016
- 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: 5a347f4f3222f15b50cc17a4323fab25ae4a4f7f9b6f6e773ebf31141b261429; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:15:43.196Z.