Delta Airlines Inc DFW Base Maintenance Flight 1606
Boeing 757-212 · Incident during takeoff
From Atlanta, GA to PBI · West Palm Beach, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- OPS07IA002
- 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 757-212
- 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
- N750AT
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Atlanta, GATo PBI · West Palm Beach, FL
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected 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
- 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
- Control tower › Improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Incident occurred on January 10, 2007 at about 1630 EST involving Delta Airlines (DAL) flight 1606, a Boeing 757-212, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Controllers were in the process of changing the runway configuration from landing and departing from the west to landing and departing to the east. The tower local controller instructed DAL1606, "cleared for take off runway 9L, fly heading 110 at the marker". Controller then saw an aircraft on landing roll on runway 27L and noticed there were still other aircraft inbound for runway 27L and instructed DAL1606 to abort the takeoff.
Captain aborted at 140 knots, and exited the runway. He asked the ground controller to watch the airplane as it taxied back to the ramp because the brake temperature was up and he was concerned about fire; at that time there was no smoke. As the plane was taxiing to the gate, the controller noticed smoke coming from the right main gear and called for crash, fire, and rescue services. Three tires were deflated but there was no fire.
There were no injuries to the 6 crew or 167 passengers.
Probable cause
This incident was caused by the local controller's issuance of an improper takeoff clearance to DAL1606. Contributing was the failure of the oncoming and outgoing local controllers to provide and receive a complete position relief briefing; and the oncoming controller's failure to use all available information sources to facilitate situational awareness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record OPS07IA002
- Event ID
- 20070119X00072
- Case number
- OPS07IA002
- 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: 9ee468bd79324579316aba9f0d1daf3b2eae36956b9216348d054e80aef812ba; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:47:54.077Z.