American Airlines Flight 89
Boeing 757 223 · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From Shannon Airport (SNN) to Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA266
- 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
- Accident
- 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 757 223
- 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
- N192AN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shannon Airport (SNN), ShannonTo Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL), Philadelphia, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2001)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Tailstrike
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 31, 2018, about 1315 eastern daylight time, American Airlines flight 89, a Boeing 757-223, N192AN, experienced a hard landing at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were no injuries to the 181 passengers and crew onboard. The airplane was substantially damaged. The regularly scheduled international passenger flight was operated under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from Shannon International Airport (SNN), Shannon, Ireland, to PHL. The captain was the pilot flying and the first officer was the pilot monitoring. The flight crew stated that the ILS 09R approach was normal and the airplane landed in the touchdown zone. The captain stated that as the airplane touched down the nose pitched up abruptly when the spoilers auto-deployed but that he quickly countered the pitch up and flew the nose back on to the runway. As the flight was taxiing to the gate a flight attendant called on the interphone to inform the crew that they had heard an unusual noise during landing. At the time of landing, the winds were reported to be from 130 degrees at 5 knots, with no gusts. Postflight examination of the airplane found that the aft pressure bulkhead was buckled. The skin was worn through around Station (STA) 1720 to the pressure bulkhead, and the skin was wrinkled from STA 1701 to STA 1743 and Stringer 23L to 23R.
Probable cause
The captain's improper control of the airplane during the landing flare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA266
- Event ID
- 20180816X41010
- Case number
- DCA18CA266
- 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: de5b05ecd88230b8c3c0533f745481c25ac93653230d877a37db290528368af5; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:06:16.553Z.