Federal Express Flight 1503
Boeing 727-233 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure while standing
From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM) to Harrisburg International Airport (MDT)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01IA134
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 727-233
- 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
- N277FE
- Operator
- Federal Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM), Memphis, TNTo Harrisburg International Airport (MDT), Harrisburg, 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
- Standing · engine(s) not operating
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While a mechanic was performing a "Predispatch Ops Check" on the airplane from the cockpit, ground personnel notified him that smoke was observed coming from the aft stairwell. Fire extinguishing agents were applied to the area and the fire was contained. Examination of the airplane after the incident revealed that the insulation on a wire to the standby hydraulic system electric motor pump had chafed through, allowing the wire conductor to contact a hydraulic system "A" case drain return line. Approximately four feet above the hydraulic line, a 1-inch by 3/16 inch hole was observed in the backside of a reservoir pressurization line, which was fed by a 13th stage bleed-air line. According to Equipment Quality Analysis Reports submitted by Boeing, the chafing between the standby hydraulic pump electrical power wire, and the hydraulic system "A" case drain return line, exposed the standby pump conductor wire and resulted in electrical arcing/puncture to the system "A" return line, followed by ignition to the mist of hydraulic oil leaking from the hole in the line. The wire bundle/tube chafing condition appeared to have occurred from inadvertent mis-routing of the wire bundle during maintenance activity.
Probable cause
The inadvertent misrouting of a wire harness by maintenance personnel, which resulted in chafing to a hydraulic line and electrical wire, and subsequent fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01IA134
- Event ID
- 20010612X01155
- Case number
- NYC01IA134
- 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: 2d63855f30c86b20465d68e64bc6511bace7da23f54284657468a2de130bde82; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:13:12.420Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N277FE; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.