Delta Airlines Flight 1188
McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Co MD-88 · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Bradley International Airport (BDL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG10IA041
- 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
- Not recorded
McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Co MD-88
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- 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
- N990DL
- Operator
- Delta Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo Bradley International Airport (BDL), Hartford, CT
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Atlanta, GA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The MD-88 declared an emergency and returned to the departure airport after the crew smelled an electrical odor during the climb to cruise. After landing the crew observed small flames emanating from the Captain’s side of the glareshield. A maintenance inspection revealed that the right wing landing light switch displayed evidence of severe heat damage and no other source for the fire could be identified. No anomalies with respect to switch installation were noted by the personnel who removed the switch. The “Right Wing Landing Light” (B1-15) and “Right Wing Landing Light Control” (B1-16) circuit breakers were also found to be open following the event.
A Systems Group was formed and the Group examined the switch at the Eaton facility in Milwaukee, WI. The switch was severely fire damaged with the greatest amount of thermal damage and contact degradation occurring at the B1 contact. The cause of the switch fire could not be determined.
Probable cause
The cause of the right wing landing light switch fire is undetermined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG10IA041
- Event ID
- 20100720X43639
- Case number
- ENG10IA041
- 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.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-07-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ffa5c04ed15bc27ba68ef48bdee3ac102ec92471ee1e7713e9127130851a34a6; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:43:49.831Z.