Air Canada Flight 1038
Airbus Canada BD500 1A11 · Accident: evacuation while standing
From Denver International Airport (DEN) to Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA25LA308
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Airbus Canada BD500 1A11
- Aircraft type
- Airbus BD500
- 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
- C-GYLQ
- Operator
- Air Canada
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, COTo Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ), Toronto
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2025)
- 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
- Standing
- 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
- Evacuation
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Task environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Air Canada flight 1038, a scheduled international passenger flight from Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, Colorado, to Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ), Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, experienced smoke and an electrical odor in the cabin, resulting in an air turnback. After landing, an evacuation was initiated, and one passenger sustained a serious injury. According to the flight crew, during climb out, the flight attendants (FAs) informed them of an electrical burning odor in the aft cabin. The flight crew turned the power to the aft galley off, but the FAs stated the odor was getting stronger and that they observed haze in the cabin. At that time, the flight crew declared an emergency and coordinated with air traffic control for a return to DEN. After landing, the flight crew stopped the aircraft on the runway and contacted the flight attendants to get an update on the situation in the cabin. The FAs stated that the situation was worse and that passengers were experiencing eye irritation. At that time, the captain commanded an evacuation. During the evacuation, FAs observed passengers standing on both wings. One FA exited onto each wing and assisted with the overwing evacuations. A passenger sustained a serious injury to their right ankle and was unable to move away from the slide. At that time, passengers were redirected into the cabin and out the left overwing exit. The remainder of the evacuation was uneventful. Post-event evaluation revealed burned debris on the baffle plate, carriers, and tray installed in an aft galley oven.
Probable cause
Unidentified burned debris in an aft galley oven, which generated smoke and odor in the cabin and led to an air turnback and subsequent evacuation, during which a serious injury occurred.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA25LA308
- Event ID
- 20250831200905
- Case number
- DCA25LA308
- 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, cause areas, 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: 0fb173bf84f01192fdb211bac0d58064d6ed75e6e559de47a309d9b116a7280e; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:17:23.829Z.