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FedEx Express Flight 3015

25 Nov 2000 · Newark, NJ, United States

McDonnell Douglas MD-11 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route

From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK)

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Event

NTSB case
IAD01IA019
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

McDonnell Douglas MD-11

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
N582FE
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), NJTo Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, CA
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
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
None

Cause areas

  • Hydraulic system, shutoff valve › Shorted
  • Reason for occurrence undetermined

Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Newark, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.

NTSB narrative

While climbing through 26,000 feet, the airplane began to pitch up and down at a fast rate. The captain took control of the airplane and leveled off. The airplane continued to pitch up and down, the autopilot was engaged, and the airplane stabilized. The airplane was slowed to 230 knots and the autopilot was turned off. The pitch oscillations began again. The crew declared an emergency and returned to Newark International Airport, Newark, New Jersey, and landed without incident. The left inboard elevator parallel engage solenoid shut off valve was replaced and no further discrepancies were noted with the system. Examination of the faulty valve revealed that a short was found when tested between coil 1 and coil 2. Disassembly of the unit revealed that hydraulic fluid was found underneath the case assembly and around the coil assembly. The examination also revealed that the orange colored lead to coil 1, and the brown colored lead to coil 2 had fused together through the insulation and caused the electrical short. It could not be determined as to how the hydraulic fluid entered the valve, or if the fluid contributed to the electrical short. At the time of this report, Boeing was in the process of establishing a components team to research the possibility of fluid contamination in these valves.

Probable cause

a short in the left inboard elevator parallel engage solenoid valve for undetermined reasons.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record IAD01IA019
Event ID
20001226X45487
Case number
IAD01IA019
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: dbcd5a13111010a83730b7b11023df827ca8a287cc55452d6ba0676165ff998d; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:20:14.108Z.
  • The NTSB's operator name is blank for N582FE; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.