ENG20WA017 · Airbus A320 271N
Airbus A320 271N · Incident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Mexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MMMX) to General Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport (MMTJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG20WA017
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Airbus A320 271N
- 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
- N528VL
- Operator
- Volaris
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mexico City Benito Juárez International Airport (MMMX), Mexico CityTo General Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport (MMTJ), Tijuana
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mexico City, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On January 24, 2020, an Airbus A320-271N neo, powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW1127G-JM geared turbofan engines, experienced a right (No. 2) engine failure while climbing through 11,500 feet after takeoff from the Mexico City Intentional Airport (MMMX). The airplane returned to MMMX where an uneventful landing was made; no injuries were reported to the passengers or crew. Post flight inspection found that the low pressure turbine stage 3 blades on the No. 2 engine were all fractured at various lengths.
The Mexican Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) is conduction an Annex 13 investigation and the National Transportation Safety Board is participation as the State of Manufactured and Design of the engines.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG20WA017
- Event ID
- 20200227X84947
- Case number
- ENG20WA017
- 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: 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: 1429e055bd7b14fe100e20471dbab8f22a75958c382afb452dfe7f2bb0d17078; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:11:49.933Z.