Delta Air Lines Flight 295
Boeing 747 451 · Incident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Narita International Airport (NRT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG14IA027
- 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 747 451
- 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
- N669US
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo Narita International Airport (NRT), Tokyo
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1990)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane, a Boeing 747-451, had just taken off when the No. 4 engine, a Pratt & Whitney PW4056, lost power and then caught fire. The crew had to discharge two fire bottles into the engine's nacelle before the fire was extinguished. The airplane returned to the airport for a three-engine landing without further incident.
The disassembly of the engine revealed one 5th stage compressor blade was fractured transversely across the blade neck. The metallurgical examination of the blade confirmed a fatigue fracture that had originated from the aft concave side corner of the blade neck. The metallurgical examination also revealed evidence of grit blasting with embedded aluminum oxide media on the blade neck that, per the overhaul instructions, is a no grit blast area. Grit blasting of the blade root's contact surfaces with aluminum oxide media is a preparatory step for the application of plasma spray material, which is one of the repairs that was accomplished to the fractured blade.
The blade was overhauled by Turbine Overhaul Services (TOS), Singapore. TOS is an FAA-certificated Part 145 repair station for the overhaul and repair of turbine engine compressor blades and vanes. An audit of TOS's PW4000 5th stage compressor blade overhaul process showed that it conformed to the requirements except for the grit blasting operation that showed the grit blasting gun was being held to close to the blade. In addition, the masking process that was in use could result in no grit blast areas of the blade root being exposed to grit blasting.
The fire was caused by hydraulic fluid that leaked from the pressure line to pulse damper B-nut at the pump that loosened due to vibration following the compressor blade separation.
Probable cause
Turbine Overhaul Service's aggressive grit blasting and incomplete masking of the blade root neck that allowed the no grit blast area being exposed during the overhaul of the blade resulting in blasting media being embedded in the blade root from which a fatigue crack developed. The fatigue crack propagated until separation of the blade occurred that resulted in a complete loss of engine power. The fire was caused by the B-nut on the hydraulic line from the fuel pump and pulsation damper loosening from engine vibration after the compressor blade separated spraying high pressure fluid into the engine compartment that ignited on the hot engine cases.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG14IA027
- Event ID
- 20140922X14716
- Case number
- ENG14IA027
- 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: 65417a5a1b68268d5b159bd188ff8e7ef1071359f569c89d10ea1ac8fce9979b; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:46:51.882Z.