Federal Express Airbus Industrie A300F4-605R incident
Airbus Industrie A300F4-605R · Incident en route
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03IA137
- 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
Airbus Industrie A300F4-605R
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A300
- 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
- N676FE
- Operator
- Federal Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, CATo Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, CO
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Contamination, other than water
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Smoke
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, slides › Not operating
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During climb out, the fight crew declared an emergency due to smoke in the cockpit and returned to the departure airport for a normal landing, after which the emergency evacuation slides failed to inflate. The flight crew said that they smelled an acrid smoke followed immediately by the illumination of the MAIN DECK CARGO FIRE light and the audio tone (bell). They conducted the emergency procedures, declared an emergency, and turned back for landing. On the downwind leg the MAIN DECK CARGO FIRE light went out; however, on final approach, the MID 2 LOOPS A and B illuminated. After landing the flight crew attempted to evacuate via the 1R emergency slide; however, it did not inflate. The first officer said that he was able to open the door, and that they made several unsuccessful attempts to manually inflate the slide without success. Post incident examination found that the slides' inflation bottle was fully pressurized. Two maintenance personnel noted that the transport-locking pin was with the slide when it was removed from the airplane. The slide was disassembled for inspection at the manufacturer's facility. No discrepancies were found that would have prevented the slide from inflating. Damage was found to the slide's girt bar in the area of the manual inflation handle that was consistent with the transport-locking pin being installed in the inflation bottle's regulator at the time of the slide's deployment. The cause of the smoke was determined to be oil or other fluid contamination of the air-condition packs.
Probable cause
the failure of the 1R evacuation slide to inflate because the transport-locking pin had not been removed from the regulator during the slide's installation on the 1R door. The cause of the cabin/cockpit smoke was contamination of the air conditioning packs.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03IA137
- Event ID
- 20030428X00581
- Case number
- LAX03IA137
- 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, 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: 2ea6d75bdb89d46885d8eacb85d240a2eb0f5f84879366c5d3f21324d983eaf9; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:52:14.760Z.