Delta Air Lines Boeing 757 2Q8 incident
Boeing 757 2Q8 · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) during initial climb
From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to San Diego International Airport (SAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG16IA027
- 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 757 2Q8
- 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
- N706TW
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), New York, NYTo San Diego International Airport (SAN), San Diego, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 1997)
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
An O-ring was severed when being installed on a fuel tube during maintenance. The damage degraded the O-ring sealing function at the right engine FFT-to-fuel OUT tube flange. During the next takeoff, high-pressure fuel flowed past the damaged seal and sprayed into the engine core compartment. The fuel contacted hot engine surfaces and ignited. The right nacelle fire detection system detected the fire and a right engine fire warning alerted in the cockpit. The flight crew shut down the right engine, which cut off the engine fuel supply. The fire extinguished after the fuel supply was stopped. The fire damaged the right engine external components and burned through the right nacelle inboard core cowl.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel's failure to ensure proper installation of a fuel tube O-ring, which resulted in an undercowl engine fire during initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG16IA027
- Event ID
- 20160707X02944
- Case number
- ENG16IA027
- 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: 5e4ac00b25be02e0b3d095b8f9dde2a6d3b54dce000609506876343f7f6c4d6d; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:37:48.002Z.