Vietnam Airlines Airbus A321 231 incident
Airbus A321 231 · Incident: uncontained engine failure during takeoff
From Tan Son Nhat International Airport (VVTS) to Phnom Penh International Airport (VDPP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG20WA021
- 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
- Airline
- 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 A321 231
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A321
- 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
- VN-A392
- Operator
- Vietnam Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tan Son Nhat International Airport (VVTS), TAN SON NHATTo Phnom Penh International Airport (VDPP), Phnom Penh
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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 · rejected 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
- Uncontained engine failure
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The government of Vietnam has notified the NTSB of an incident involving an Airbus A321 airplane that occurred on March 18, 2020. A Vietnam Airbus A321-231 powered by two International Aero Engines V2533-A5 turbofan engines experienced a No. 2 (right) engine high pressure turbine disk rupture and uncontainment during the takeoff roll from Tan Son Nhat International Airport, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Captain performed a rejected takeoff and the airplane was stopped safely on the runway; no injuries were report and no evacuation was necessary. Post event engine inspection confirmed a high pressure turbine stage 1 disk had burst and penetrated through the engine case and engine cowling.
The NTSB has appointed a U.S. Accredited Representative as the state of manufacturer of the engine to assist the government of Vietnam in their investigation under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13. All investigative information will be released by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG20WA021
- Event ID
- 20200318X05700
- Case number
- ENG20WA021
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1f3172b39b751da2b554cbd764870e0cb74c2df00533c6f524781b593160c3aa; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:19:27.911Z.