Aruba Airlines Airbus A320 232 incident
Airbus A320 232 · Incident: part(s) separation from aircraft during takeoff
From Miami International Airport (KMIA) to Oranjestad
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG16IA037
- 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
- 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
- Unknown
Airbus A320 232
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A320
- 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
- P4-AAA
- Operator
- Aruba Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami International Airport (KMIA), Miami, FLTo Oranjestad
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 1996)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The examination of the No. 2 Engine Fan Cowl Components showed no evidence of preexisting damage on the latches/cowls prior to the event. Further, there was no evidence of latch design failures due to the previous nights routine maintenance work. Manufactures and Regulatory Agencies have released Service Bulletins/Regulatory Actions to prevent further loss of Fan Cowl Doors. At the time of the incident, Aruba Airlines had not incorporated (due to time in service) any of the modifications proposed by the Manufacturer/Regulatory Agencies.
Probable cause
the incorrect latching of the #2 Engine Fan Cowl following a routine maintenance check that resulted in separation of the cowl during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG16IA037
- Event ID
- 20160929X93620
- Case number
- ENG16IA037
- 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: f7c2c9210e8d8f172fd3202ed4525f1421fb48886b04ce2a1bc35524162029cc; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:20:05.105Z.