American Airlines Flight 2253
Boeing 757-223 · Incident: runway excursion during landing
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Jackson Hole Airport (JAC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA11IA015
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 757-223
- 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
- N668AA
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo Jackson Hole Airport (JAC), Jackson Hole, WY
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The National Transportation Safety Board’s full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-12/01.
On December 29, 2010, about 1138 mountain standard time, American Airlines flight 2253, a Boeing 757-200, N668AA, ran off the departure end of runway 19 after landing at Jackson Hole Airport (JAC), Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The airplane came to rest about 730 feet past the departure end of the runway in deep snow. The 179 passengers, 2 pilots, and 4 flight attendants on board were not injured, and the airplane sustained minor damage. The airplane was registered to and operated by American Airlines as a scheduled domestic flight under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 121. Instrument meteorological conditions in light snow prevailed at JAC at the time of the landing, and the flight operated on an instrument flight rules flight plan. The flight originated from Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, Illinois, about 0941 central standard time.
Probable cause
a manufacturing defect in a clutch mechanism that prevented the speedbrakes from automatically deploying after touchdown, and the captain’s failure to monitor and extend the speedbrakes manually. Also causal was the failure of the thrust reversers to deploy when initially commanded. Contributing to the incident was the captain’s failure to confirm speedbrake extension before announcing their deployment, and his distraction caused by the thrust reversers’ failure to initially deploy after landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA11IA015
- Event ID
- 20101229X22154
- Case number
- DCA11IA015
- 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: 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: f62e0d52db9019ba3b96541587d6ed4510961025c98e6fe147dbbd362b2cbe64; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:39:02.730Z.