Trans World Airlines Flight 379
McDonnell Douglas MD-83 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) to Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01IA211
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-83
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-83
- 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
- N9413T
- Operator
- Trans World Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), Saint Louis, MOTo Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, 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 · 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Compressor assembly, blade › Fatigue
- Engine assembly, other › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, operated as a scheduled passenger flight, experienced a catastrophic failure of the left engine while flying at 31,000 feet. The flightcrew heard a thud and noticed that the left engine was surging. White smoke filled the cabin and cockpit. The flightcrew donned their oxygen masks, declared an emergency and initiated an emergency descent to Kansas City International Airport (MCI), Kansas City, Missouri. While descending towards MCI, the flight crew changed their emergency landing destination to Whiteman Air Force Base (SZL), Knob Noster, Missouri, when they were approximately 18 miles north of SZL. Flight crews are not issued approach charts for SZL by their operator. The flight crew requested the runway 19 instrument landing system (ILS) frequency from air traffic control (ATC) and were issued the incorrect frequency. The flight crew also requested and was given the inbound course for ILS 19. The flight crew never obtained the correct ILS frequency for the remainder of the flight and relied upon a radar approach to SZL. During the approach, ATC instructed the flight crew to maintain the a minimum vectoring altitude of 2,500 feet mean sea level. The flight crew descended below minimum vectoring altitudes of 2,500 feet mean sea level to 1,800 feet msl in order to descend below a cloud layer which was 1,400 feet above ground level during the radar approach to SZL. A metallurgical examination revealed a fatigue fracture of one fan blade. Examination of the left engine revealed that the fan exit case exhibited a 360 degree fan exit case fracture. Several service bulletins (SBs) applicable to the fan exit case introduce a newer engine case made of steel to replace the older aluminum case and to install stops to restrict the axial separation of the case in the event of case fracturing. The SBs state that there have been 5 instances of full 360 degree fan exit case fracture, all due to fan blade fracture. They further state that when the case fractures, the front of the engine with the cowl shifts forward. The incident engine had an aluminum fan exit case and did not have stops installed.
Probable cause
The separation of a fan blade due to fatigue failure which led to case separation and loss of engine power in the left engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01IA211
- Event ID
- 20010717X01445
- Case number
- CHI01IA211
- 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: 6c189d795d52accbc481263eafdb43448a0b7e3cb5877d0cec92810ad790af0f; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:11:49.068Z.