Flight DAL74 · Boeing 767-332ER
Boeing 767-332ER · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Milan Malpensa International Airport (MXP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02LA075
- 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
- Accident
- 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 767-332ER
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N1608
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo Milan Malpensa International Airport (MXP), Milan
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Door, inspection › Not secured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Boeing 767-332ER, experienced an in-flight separation of the auxiliary power unit doors while climbing to the assigned cruise altitude. According to the Captain, as the airplane climbed through 15, 000 feet, and accelerated through 320 knots, he heard a loud bang. He elected to reduce the airspeed to 270 knots and return to Atlanta. The flight landed in Atlanta without further incident. A review of maintenance records showed that the auxiliary power unit (APU) had been serviced by ground maintenance personnel about one hour before the airplane departed. The examination of the airframe revealed that both APU doors were missing from their normally installed positions. Examination of the APU door assembly failed to disclose a mechanical problem with the door latching assemblies.
Probable cause
Company maintenance personnel inadequate maintenance inspection that resulted in the in-flight separation of the APU inspection doors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02LA075
- Event ID
- 20020412X00510
- Case number
- ATL02LA075
- 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, coordinates. 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: 1e3a31ea64de3084d3328c89a3511147ee4d7fccc18ae6f569f0b97590a88e32; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:03:57.034Z.