American Airlines Flight 1005
Boeing 737-823 · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From an unrecorded airport to Lynden Pindling International Airport (NAS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA21LA137
- 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
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-823
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N834NN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lynden Pindling International Airport (NAS), Nassau
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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 May 28, 2021, at 12:40 PM central daylight time, American Airlines flight 1005, a Boeing 737-800, N834NN, struck a light pole while taxing for takeoff at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. There were no injuries to the 166 passengers and crew onboard. The airplane was substantially damaged. The regularly scheduled international passenger flight was operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from DFW to the Lynden Pindling International Airport (NAS), Nassau, Bahamas. According to the flight crew, this was the Captain’s first flight of the month after being on vacation, and it was the first officer’s (FO) first day back flying since September 2020 due to furlough. The flight crew indicated that prior to pushback, they had setup the airplane for a south departure from DFW. However, after being pushed back, they completed the After Start Checklist and then noticed that the other traffic was departing to the north. After confirming this by tuning in the Automated Terminal Information System (ATIS), they updated their departure clearance before calling the ramp for taxi clearance. The captain stated that the airplane must have veered left of centerline as he and the FO’s attention was focused inside the cockpit as they were reconfiguring the instruments. The captain indicated that the left wing struck a light pole, as he was adjusting the course and heading knobs. The captain stopped the airplane, called ground control, and the airplane was subsequently towed back to the gate. Daylight visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. Post-flight inspection revealed substantial damage to the left wing, including damage to the number 1 leading edge slat, wing skin, front spar, and track ribs.
Probable cause
The captain’s decision to adjust his flight instruments while taxiing the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA21LA137
- Event ID
- 20210529103164
- Case number
- DCA21LA137
- 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, cause areas. 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: 53edacbec0fcff41e4122d479ac6a300afbf532ec487fb9789391b445ed61495; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:05:56.115Z.