TWA Airlines Boeing 757-200 incident
Boeing 757-200 · Incident en route
From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03IA101
- 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 757-200
- 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
- N704X
- Operator
- TWA Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), St Louis, MOTo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CA
- 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 · 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
- Door, interior crew › Deployed inadvertently
- Door, interior crew › Disengaged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The lead flight attendant had given the captain a tray of refreshments and was attempting to secure the flight deck door. When the flight attendant slammed the door closed, the upper pressure relief latch activated, causing the upper decompression panel to open. The panel fell forward and down, striking the captain on the head. The captain received a 1-inch cut on his head. The first officer requested and received clearance for an immediate descent and landing at Denver, Colorado. An examination of the flight deck door showed the correct placard in place; however, the door was not in compliance with the manufacturer's issued Service Bulletin (SB), B231001-52-02 for the Boeing model 757-200 flight deck door. On further examination, the doorstop mechanism, mounted on the bottom of the flight deck door, was found to be loose and missing one attachment screw. According to an FAA inspector, this misalignment would cause the door to "hang and catch" the floor, requiring added force to close the door. The SB instructed that modified pressure relief latches and latch spacers be installed on the upper and lower decompression panels on flight deck doors, and latch straps be installed on upper panels. The airline company and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were aware of previous problems with the flight deck door latches. The NTSB issued an urgent safety recommendation letter requesting the FAA issue an Airworthiness Directive that required compliance with the SB within 90 days. The FAA subsequently issued the appropriate AD.
Probable cause
the inadvertent activation of the flight deck door's upper pressure relief latch during closure of the door, resulting in the deployment of the upper decompression panel which subsequently struck the captain. Contributing factors included the operator's improper compliance with the door manufacturer's service bulletin, the operator's inadequate service and maintenance of the flight deck door, and the door manufacturer's inadequate service bulletin compliance determination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03IA101
- Event ID
- 20030616X00873
- Case number
- DEN03IA101
- 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, 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: 7d53e1acf558991e80160e44682ab1dbf133ae11681643f7eee83459fd3e9c7c; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:46:59.870Z.