Air France Flight 558
Airbus A319 115 · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Charles de Gaulle International Airport (LFPG) to N'Djamena International Airport (FTTJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11RA480
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Airbus A319 115
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A319
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- F-GRXN
- Operator
- Air France
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charles de Gaulle International Airport (LFPG), ParisTo N'Djamena International Airport (FTTJ), N'Djamena
- 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
- En route · 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
- None
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hassi Messaoud, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On September 22, 2011, about 2300 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Air France flight 558, an Airbus A319, F-GRXN, declared an emergency during cruise flight following an indication of smoke in the lavatory. The crew and passengers were not injured, and the airplane sustained no damage. The flight departed Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France (LFPG), non-stop to N'Djamena International Airport, N'Djamena, Chad (FTTJ).
The airplane diverted to Hassi Messaoud/Oued Irara - Krim Belkacem Airport, Algeria (DAUH), and landed without incident. The airplane was subsequently examined, and no indications of fire were noted. The forward galley air-chiller unit was removed for further examination.
The investigation has been delegated to the French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses pour la Securite de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) by the government of Algeria. The BEA has requested assistance from the NTSB in this investigation. Further information pertaining to this incident may be obtained from:
Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation civile Bâtiment 153 Aéroport du Bourget 93350 Le Bourget France http://www.bea-fr.org
This report is for information purposes only and contains only information obtained for, or released by, the Government of France.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11RA480
- Event ID
- 20111108X00338
- Case number
- WPR11RA480
- 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: 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: 19b88fa4d1b5478c5c28312ed877e0bee51318a64940aafc7a4537fd2253d125; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:55:07.303Z.