Air China Flight 984
Boeing 747-400 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Beijing Capital International Airport (ZBAA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07IA198
- 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 747-400
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- B-2470
- Operator
- Air China
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo Beijing Capital International Airport (ZBAA), Beijing
- 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 · roll/run
- 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
- Landing gear, tire › Burst
- Landing gear, tire › Cut/severed
- Landing gear, wheel › Disintegrated
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While taxing for departure, the airplane's No. 12 tire on the right body landing gear contacted foreign object debris (FOD), which resulted in a cut tire and loss of pressure. An electronic message reflecting the loss of pressure in the No. 12 tire was displayed on the engine indicating and crew alerting system (EICAS) in the cockpit; however, no further action was taken by the flight crew. During the takeoff roll, the two aft tires, No. 11 (inboard) and 12 (outboard), on the right body landing gear (RBLG) burst and their associated wheels fractured, which caused minor damage to the airplane. The airplane returned back to the airport and landed uneventfully. Examination of the airplane's systems and wheel assemblies revealed no additional anomalies.
Probable cause
The loss of pressure in the number 12 tire due to inadvertent contact with foreign object debris while taxiing prior to takeoff, which resulted the number 11 tire to over deflect and burst during takeoff roll. Contributing to the incident was the failure of the flight crew to detect and act upon the EICAS message alerting them to the loss of pressure in the number 12 tire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07IA198
- Event ID
- 20070716X00940
- Case number
- LAX07IA198
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4628cfdcaaca45ed4ec5959fb4d32997a8584092e2f0fb7e808314e6aa7c8190; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:43:23.227Z.