China Airlines Flight 5254
Boeing 747 400 · Incident: aircraft structural failure on approach
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG13IA027
- 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
- B18701
- Operator
- China Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AKTo Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2000)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Aircraft structural 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced a partial separation of the right inboard foreflap during approach to the airport after the crew selected flaps 30. The crew performed a go-around and landed uneventfully. Examination of the outboard fitting that attaches the right inboard foreflap to the sequence carriage revealed a fracture in the lug. A portion of the fracture had a slow growth region consistent with fatigue that caused the lug to fail under normal flight conditions. The failure of the lug resulted in a skewed condition of the right inboard foreflap and subsequent partial separation of the foreflap. Examination of the sequence carriages for both the right and left inboard foreflaps revealed several discrepancies with the bearings including incompatible parts, flat spots, play, binding, and roughness of operation.
Due to several other prior events, the manufacturer previously recommended specific maintenance tasks on the foreflaps and the FAA issued an airworthiness directive for mandatory inspections. A review of the airplane's maintenance records revealed that the foreflap components had been inspected or lubricated three times in the preceding six months, the most recent occurring two weeks prior to the incident. The records showed that the airplane was in compliance with all required and recommended maintenance practices for the flaps. However, maintenance personnel failed to notice the fatigue cracking in the lug and the anomalies with the bearings on the sequence carriages during the dedicated foreflap maintenance tasks.
Probable cause
Failure of the right inboard foreflap outboard fitting due to fatigue and bearing anomalies on the sequence carriages which resulted in the partial separation of the right inboard foreflap. Contributing to the incident was the failure of maintenance personnel to detect the fatigue cracking and bearing anomalies during dedicated inspections.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG13IA027
- Event ID
- 20130524X83830
- Case number
- ENG13IA027
- 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. 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: 1b05efc22a7b06765fce482834bd2984bd4fcdf56e6838cf245bfb940fc3b3a4; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:39:27.588Z.