Jet America Airlines Douglas DC-9-82 incident
Douglas DC-9-82 · Incident: fire while standing
From Long Beach International Airport (LGB) to Chicago, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX82IA103
- 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
Douglas DC-9-82
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N778JA
- Operator
- Jet America Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Beach International Airport (LGB), Long Beach, CATo Chicago, IL
- 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) start-up
- 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
- Fire
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING ENGINE START, GROUND PERSONNEL REPORTED OVER THE INTERCOM TO THE PILOTS THAT FUEL WAS DRIPPING FROM THE NO. 2 ENGINE AS IT WAS SPOOLING UP AND CALLED FOR CONTINUED MOTORING WITH THE FUEL LEVER OFF. WHEN GROUND PERSONNEL THEN REPORTED A FIRE THE CAPTAIN DISCHARGED BOTH FIRE BOTTLES AND CONTINUED MOTORING THE ENGINE. AIRPORT FIRE CREWS ARRIVED AND EXTINGUISHED THE FIRE. THE PASSENGERS WERE EVACUATED WITHOUT INCIDENT. NO FIRE WARNINGS WERE RECEIVED IN THE COCKPIT, ACCORDING TO BOTH PILOTS. THE ENGINE WAS DISASSEMBLED AND NO REASON FOR THE FIRE DETERMINED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX82IA103
- Event ID
- 20020917X02338
- Case number
- LAX82IA103
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1982-03-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3e6a61ae1e45afa864bcb0604340d9e25889d8d8a9642451109932dd288ce655; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:11:27.701Z.