Omni Air International McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 incident
McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Shannon Airport (EINN) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA07IA088
- 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 DC-10-30
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-10
- 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
- N270AX
- Operator
- Omni Air International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shannon Airport (EINN), ShannonTo Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While flying at 13,000 feet mean sea level (msl), and decelerating to 250 knots in a DC-10-30 airplane, the horizontal stabilizer could not be moved by either commands from the autopilot or using the primary and alternate control switches from the cockpit. The horizontal stabilizer remained at approximately 1 degree airplane nose-up which resulted in excessive cockpit control forces. An emergency was declared with air traffic control and the flight landed uneventfully on runway 27R at ATL. The inoperative horizontal stabilizer trim system was caused by improper overhaul of the horizontal stabilizer chain drive unit drive assembly (horizontal stabilizer drive assembly) P/N AJH 7337-507, S/N DCA-418 by omission of one pin (P/N 3D0009-5-4), one nut (P/N MS21043-08), and one washer (P/N NAS 1252-BL) which secure the drive gear of the horizontal stabilizer drive assembly. The omission of the parts resulted in fatigue failure of another pin (P/N AJH7378-1) and shear failure of the single installed pin (P/N 3D0009-5-4). This prevented output of the horizontal stabilizer drive assembly being transmitted to acme screws of the horizontal stabilizer. There was no flight crew write-ups for the previous 93 days related to pitch trim. The horizontal stabilizer drive assembly was overhauled on April 30, 1999, and installed in the incident airplane on April 23, 2006. The airplane had accumulated 2,421 hours and 473 cycles since the overhauled assembly was installed.
Probable cause
The improper overhaul of the horizontal stabilizer chain drive unit drive assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA07IA088
- Event ID
- 20070510X00542
- Case number
- MIA07IA088
- 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: 4c27acd85229fd72dcabd4d9c6829d6f78aee2e2c34ca957fd570b8f795f3589; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:44:45.099Z.