British Airways Flight 2024
Boeing B-777 · Incident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during takeoff
From George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) to London Heathrow Airport (LHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA04IA066
- 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 B-777
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- G-VIID
- Operator
- British Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), Houston,, TXTo London Heathrow Airport (LHR), London
- 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 129: Foreign
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Compressor assembly, oil seal › Failure
- Turbine assembly, turbine blade › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the throttles were advanced for takeoff, the flightcrew heard a noise and felt a vibration from the left side of the airplane. As the airplane rotated, the crew received a cockpit warning of LH Eng Vibration - Level 5. During the climb, the crew observed smoke and haze in the cockpit and the cabin crew advised that the cabin was filling with smoke. The flightcrew declared an emergency and made an immediate landing and emergency evacuation. The investigation revealed that a turbine blade in the left engine had failed due to a fatigue crack and the resulting damage caused excessive vibration in the engine. As the engine continued to vibrate, an oil seal failed allowing oil to contaminate the bleed air and create smoke in the cockpit and cabin. The failed blade had been mis-marked with the wrong part number by the manufacturer, which allowed it to remain in service far in excess of it's life limit until the fatigue crack developed.
Probable cause
the failure of a high pressure turbine blade which damaged an oil seal and allowed smoke to enter the cabin. Contributing to the blade failure was the mis-labeling of the blade's part number by the manufacturer, which allowed the blade to remain in service far in excess of it's life limit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA04IA066
- Event ID
- 20041015X01640
- Case number
- DCA04IA066
- 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. 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: 3e81c6990f1c45724ee93ded5f5e37f337bb4ebbe205e43af4a965027dc2a3c2; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:19:08.553Z.