FedEx Flight 2410
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02IA155
- 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 DC-10-10
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-10
- 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
- N388FE
- Operator
- FedEx
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM), Memphis, TNTo Tampa International Airport (TPA), Tampa, FL
- 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
- 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
- Landing gear, normal retraction/extension assembly › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain lowered the landing gear on base leg and heard a loud bang followed by the airplane shuddering. An emergency was declared and the flight crew conducted the emergency abnormal procedures. A forced landing was made to the destination airport and all main landing gear tires blew out. The flight crew completed an emergency shutdown and evacuated the airplane with out further incident. Examination of the airplane revealed a failure of the left hand main landing gear retract cylinder support frame due to fatigue, the breaking of the hydraulic lines attached to the retract cylinder, dumping of hydraulic fluid overboard, and the deactivation of the antiskid system.
Probable cause
The failure of the left main landing gear retract cylinder support frame due to fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02IA155
- Event ID
- 20020813X01372
- Case number
- ATL02IA155
- 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, 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: a369950023a3bac767cb0b817abb59c33e7f1f88d6c76b0411ffdeb3413b1aa2; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:59:25.018Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N388FE; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.