American Airlines Boeing 727-023 incident
Boeing 727-023 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI85IA212
- 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 727-023
- 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
- N1984
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MDTo Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, IL
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Flight engineer › Gear extension, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLT 57 HAD DEPARTED BALTIMORE FOR CHICAGO. ON FINAL APPROACH AT OHARE THE CREW DISCOVERED THE NOSE GEAR WOULD NOT EXTEND. THE FE MADE THREE ATTEMPTS TO CRANK DOWN THE GEAR ALL OF WHICH WERE UNSUCESSFUL. AFTER LANDING WITH NOSE GEAR UP ALL 121 OCCUPANTS SLIDE EVACUATED WITH NO REPORTED INJURY. AFTER JACKING THE NOSE UP A GROUND CREW MAN WENT ABOARD AND CRANKED THE GEAR TO THE DOWN POSITION WITH NO DIFFICULTY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI85IA212
- Event ID
- 20001214X36397
- Case number
- CHI85IA212
- 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 1985-05-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1dbc1a80fbe7198a97188909e26728fb85e159af7c10ae680f77c2c5a514d20f; retrieved 2026-09-18T20:22:20.115Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N1984; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, AALA.