DEN07FA008 · McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30
McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07FA008
- 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 MD-90-30
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-90
- 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
- N906DA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Landing gear, nose gear assembly › Blocked(total)
- Landing gear, nose gear assembly › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When the landing gear was extended on final approach, the nose gear UNSAFE light illuminated. A low fly-by was made, and control tower personnel confirmed that the nose gear appeared to be retracted. After consulting with the company's maintenance department, unsuccessful attempts were made to lower the nose gear, and a nose gear-up landing was made. Postaccident examination revealed that the nose landing gear center spray deflector had fractured and rotated, preventing gear extension. The spray deflector is designed to deflect water and other runway material kicked up by the nose wheel away from the rear-mounted engines which could cause flameouts and engine damage. About one-third of the spray deflector was broken off. Laboratory examination of the deflector revealed the fracture was typical of overstress. The nose gear doors were scraped, and the aluminum skin just aft of the nose wheel well was scraped through, exposing 5 longerons and 6 stringers, compromising the pressure vessel.
Probable cause
A fractured nose gear assembly spray deflector that blocked the nose gear from extending during landing, and resulted in an intentional nose gear up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07FA008
- Event ID
- 20061017X01529
- Case number
- DEN07FA008
- 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 2006-10-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d69d4be8b85305d8ff3f96b2560e9f2658ea6d7a55b61ee26066a80024b7c0dd; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:49:52.968Z.