American Airlines Flight 2439
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 (MD-82) · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while taxiing
From Nashville International Airport (BNA) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA132
- 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
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-82 (MD-82)
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell 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
- N452AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashville International Airport (BNA), Nashville, TNTo Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), DFW Airport, TX
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Passenger › Evacuation, performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While taxiing after landing, the flight crew started the airplane's auxiliary power unit (APU). Shortly thereafter, the cabin began to fill with smoke. The captain ordered an emergency evacuation. All slides functioned normally; however, during the egress a passenger sustained a broken right ankle. Examination of the airplane revealed the smoke was caused when the APU ingested hydraulic fluid that leaked from the pump after APU start-up.
Probable cause
An inadvertent trauma to the passenger's ankle during an emergency evacuation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA132
- Event ID
- 20030423X00557
- Case number
- FTW03LA132
- 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, damage. 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: c9f0a92a55a7031d1e0461e0ceb396636229179b8092f0c119a2773f78ff327a; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:51:25.693Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N452AA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.