DEN03IA067 · Boeing 757-232
Boeing 757-232 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03IA067
- 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 757-232
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N6712B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Fuel system, line › 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
As the airplane leveled off at 10,000 feet, the left engine fire warning light illuminated. An emergency was declared. When the left engine was shut down, the fire warning light remained illuminated and a fire bottle was discharged. The warning light remained illuminated. A second fire bottle was discharged and the warning light still remained illuminated. When the airplane was on final approach, the warning light extinguished. No visible fire was seen from the cabin or from the control tower. After an uneventful landing, the fire department met the airplane and determined there was some "residual smoke" but that the fire was extinguished. The airplane taxied to the gate and the passengers deplaned via the jetway. Engine examination revealed a flex line routed near the thrust reverser had failed. There was a fuel leak and a hole had burned through the shroud surrounding the hot section.
Probable cause
total failure of a fuel flex line. A contributing factor was a fuel leak, resulting in an inflight engine compartment fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03IA067
- Event ID
- 20030421X00540
- Case number
- DEN03IA067
- 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: ccc4d88dca5720f47d5b1ba5d4efeddff7d07fbaedf4b18013787244b15babf2; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:50:59.994Z.