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Flight 1554 · McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30

9 Jun 2006 · Denver, CO, United States

McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing

From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to Denver International Airport (DEN)

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Event

NTSB case
DEN06IA083
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

McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30

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
N907DA
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo 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
Landing · landing roll
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

No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The flight crew had been advised by the previous crew that the overheat light had illuminated on landing when the brake temperature reached 650 degrees, and an entry had been made in the maintenance logbook accordingly. Maintenance personnel inspected the brakes and returned the airplane to service. The next leg was uneventful until the airplane landed and turned off the runway. The crew noticed the brake temperature was climbing rapidly. As the airplane entered the ramp area, the brake temperature warning light illuminated. The first officer asked tower personnel if there was any smoke coming out of the left wheel well. They replied, "Negative." She requested the fire department to respond and was instructed to stop short of the gate. Shortly thereafter, the fuse plugs melted on both left tires and the brakes caught fire. The brake temperature gauge failed and the crew was unaware of the brake fire. The fire department arrived and extinguished the fire. They did not advise the crew that there had been a brake fire, but rather advised them that the brake temperature had been as high as 1200 degrees Celsius and had now been cooled to below 200 degrees Celsius. In addition to the melted fuse plugs and deflated tires, paint on the left main landing gear was charred and blistered. The landing gear was replaced. Tests on the brake fluid and dual anti-skid control modules revealed no anomalies.

Probable cause

a brake fire for reasons undetermined. A contributing factor was the inadequate inspection by the maintenance crew.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record DEN06IA083
Event ID
20060616X00745
Case number
DEN06IA083
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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-06-10.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 63643623234728801655282b5141d38046d2ffa8a2e1f56026376c591e28ceba; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:52:30.971Z.