Vietnam Airlines Flight VN224
Boeing 777 206 · Incident
From Tan Son Nhat International Airport (SGN) to Noi Bai International Airport (HAN)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's date. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG09RA003
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Not recorded
Boeing 777 206
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- VN-A143
- Operator
- Vietnam Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tan Son Nhat International Airport (SGN), Ho Chi Minh CitTo Noi Bai International Airport (HAN), HaNoi
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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
- Not recorded
- Defining eventThe 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
- Not recorded
- 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 · Estimated position: the centre of Ho Chi Minh City, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On January 1, 2009, a Vietnam Airlines Boeing 777-200, registration VN-A143, flight number VN224, departed the Tan Son Nhat Airport, SGN (Ho Chi Minh City) and while climbing through 8,000 feet, a loud metallic noise was heard followed by a L ENGINE FAIL EICAS message, airplane vibration, and a acid burning smelled followed by rapidly by a FIRE ENGINE LEFT warning. The flight crew performed the engine fire checklist and the fire warning ceased after discharging the first fire bottle. The flight crew declared an emergency and returned to SGN for a successful single engine landing. There were no reported injuries to the two flight crew members, twelve cabin crew members or the 318 passengers on board.
The accident is being investigated by the Vietnamese Civil Aviation Administration. Further information pertaining to this incident may be obtained from:
VIETNAM Director General Civil Aviation Administration Gia Lam Airport Hanoi VietNam
Tel.: (84) 4 827 3384 Fax: (84) 4 827 1913 SITA: HANCFVN AFTN: VVVVYAYX Telex: 412242 BGTVT VT
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information obtained for, or released by, the Government of Vietnam.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG09RA003
- Event ID
- 20090113X70049
- Case number
- ENG09RA003
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8d1d996fc806c74acc5e26cd57bf6896f77921f35b9c78755c81ed1072130cd2; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:41:08.372Z.