Delta Air Lines Flight 101
Boeing 767 332 · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) during initial climb
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG14IA019
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Unknown
Boeing 767 332
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N139DL
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1992)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 11, 2014, a Boeing B-767-332, registration number N139DL, operated by Delta Air Lines (DAL), and powered by two General Electric (GE) CF6-80A2 turbofan engines, experienced a left engine (No. 1) fire during climb from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angles, California. The flightcrew reported observing a left engine fire indication during climb and declared an emergency, performed the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) engine fire procedures which included shutting down the affected engine, and an air turnback to LAX was initiated. The airplane made a successful and uneventful overweight single-engine landing at LAX and Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) personnel met the aircraft and observed no damage. The airplane taxied to the gate without incident. Delta maintenance personnel opened the left engine cowling and observed heat damage, scorching, and sooting.
An examination of the engine revealed that the fire damage was concentrated underneath the engine heatshield on the left side of the engine. Flow testing of the engine revealed a fuel leak from the integrated drive generator (IDG) fuel/oil heat exchanger main housing. This was determined to be the source of the flammable fluid leak. Metallurgical examination of the IDG fuel/oil heat exchanger found a through-wall fatigue crack but no anomalies were found at the crack initiation site. The portions of the IDG power feeder cables located underneath the engine heat shield and in the general vicinity of the IDG fuel/oil heat exchanger revealed evidence of chaffing and arc burns and exhibited a considerable amount of orange tape to bundle all the cables together. The accessory drive lube and scavenge pump pressure (supply) line support bracket exhibited evidence of melted material consistent with an arc burn. The locations of the arc burn on the support bracket and the power feeder cables were in-line with one another and were the source of the electrical spark that ignited the fuel. Review of the IDG power feeder cable installation below the engine heatshield on the event engine revealed that they were misrouted creating excessive slack and dangling below the support bracket. This excessive slack in the IDG power feeder cables created the situation where the cables could get pinched/wedged between the inside of the thrust reverse cowl and the accessory drive lube and scavenge pump pressure (supply) line support bracket when the thrust cowl is closed and latched, creating the environment for the IDG power feeder cables to chaff against the support bracket. The excessive amount of tape used on the IDG power feeder cables suggests that maintenance personnel may have noticed this chaffing and added extra tape without realizing that the chaffing was caused from the thrust reverser pressing the IDG power feeder cables against the bracket or that the slack was contributing to the chaffing. DAL inspected their entire fleet of CF6-80A2 powered Boeing 767 and corrected any IDG power feeder cables that had been misrouted.
Probable cause
The combination of fuel leaking from the integrated drive generator (IDG) fuel/oil heat exchanger and the coincident arcing of the IDG power feeder cables that ignited the leaking fuel. Contributing to the ignition of the fuel was the misrouting of the IDG power feeder cables, which resulted in chaffed cables that exposed the electrical wire that contacted a metal bracket, creating an arc.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG14IA019
- Event ID
- 20140714X45633
- Case number
- ENG14IA019
- 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, coordinates. 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: cf143567d827e4fd9d967d3f9045841d6c2a008d5ede74d7b34b71f429b5d5e5; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:53:53.761Z.