Dynamic International Airways Flight 405
Boeing 767 200ER · Fire on ground due to fuel leak caused by maintenance error
From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) to Maiquetía Simón Bolívar International Airport (CCS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16FA013
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 101
- Survivors
- 101
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 22
- 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 767 200ER
- Flight
- 2D405
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N251MY
- Operator
- Dynamic International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Maiquetía Simón Bolívar International Airport (CCS), Caracas
- 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
- 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 · to runway
- 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
On October 29, 2015, Dynamic International Airways Flight 405, a Boeing 767 on a scheduled international passenger service operating from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Caracas, Venezuela, caught on fire while taxiing for departure. All 90 passengers and 11 crew members on board were evacuated using the emergency slides. However, 22 of them were injured. The aircraft was damaged beyond economic repair.
Accident
Flight 405 caught fire while taxiing for departure at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The aircraft was leaking fuel shortly before it caught fire, according to the pilots of an aircraft that was following Flight 405. All 101 passengers and crew evacuated the aircraft. Of the occupants onboard, 17 passengers and 5 crew members were taken to a local hospital to be treated for injuries. There were no burn injuries. A 62-year-old man was seriously injured after falling from one of the emergency slides used to evacuate the aircraft. Twenty-one others who had minor injuries were admitted to the hospital for abrasions, anxiety, and seat belt syndrome. The airport's two runways were closed. The south runway reopened around 3:20 PM.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has begun an investigation. On November 3, 2015, the NTSB released an update to its ongoing investigation, which stated that they found that the main fuel supply line coupling assembly had disconnected in the wing-to-engine strut above and behind the left engine. Examination of the left engine revealed no evidence of an uncontained engine failure or other types of failure. Also, the lower inboard portion of the left wing, left engine cowling, and left fuselage center section sustained thermal damage. The fire did not penetrate the fuselage. The report condemned some passengers for taking their luggage.
The final report on the accident was released on June 1, 2020. The report concluded that the failure of the main fuel line coupling assembly was "the failure of maintenance personnel to install the required safety lock wire." The NTSB also criticized the flight crew for initiating the emergency evacuation while the right engine was still running.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Dynamic International Airways Flight 405” (revision 1339304017, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
On October 29, 2015, about 12:33 pm eastern daylight time (EDT), Dynamic International Airways flight 405, a Boeing 767-200ER, N251MY, experienced a fuel leak and subsequent fire while taxiing for departure at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Florida (FLL). Of the 101 passengers and crew onboard, one passenger received serious injuries. The airplane sustained substantial damage from the fire. The flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 supplemental as a scheduled charter from FLL to Maiquetía Simón Bolívar International Airport (CCS), Caracas, Venezuela.
A significant fuel leak and subsequent fire occurred in the left engine strut and nacelle during taxi, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. The fuel leak was the result of a fuel line flexible coupling (Wiggins fitting) loosening and becoming disengaged due to the lack of a safety lockwire on the coupling as required by the maintenance manual. The leaking fuel contacted hot engine case surfaces which ignited the fire.
Records indicate that maintenance was conducted on this fitting in October of 2012 at the 4C check prior to the airplane being prepared for storage. The area would also have been subject to a visual inspection when the airplane was brought out of storage in 2015. The same maintenance facility conducted both of these activities. About 240 flight hours were logged between the aircraft returning to service and the accident. The leak occurred after the coupling loosened due to the missing safety wire which was the result of an error by the third-party maintenance provider.
The flight crew promptly shut down the left engine using the fire handle, and requested fire equipment. As the airplane stopped on the taxiway, passengers saw the fire and insisted that the cabin crew initiate an evacuation. One passenger opened an overwing exit on his own, and the slide did not deploy. The cabin crew initiated the evacuation without coordination with the flight crew. After the evacuation had already begun, the flight crew advised over the PA to evacuate out the right side of the airplane. The flight crew did not immediately shut down the right engine and an evacuating passenger ran behind the engine and was blown to the pavement resulting in serious injuries. The lack of coordination between the flight crew and cabin crew resulted in the evacuation initiating while the right engine was still running.
Probable cause
the separation of the flexible fuel line coupling and subsequent fuel leak due to the failure of maintenance personnel to install the required safety lockwire. Contributing to the severity of the accident was the initiation of the evacuation before the right engine was shut down which led to the passenger's injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Dynamic International Airways Flight 405
- Revision
- 1339304017 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q21400540
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA16FA013
- Event ID
- 20151029X44249
- Case number
- DCA16FA013
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Dynamic International Airways Flight 405" (page 48406382, revision 1339304017); merged with NTSB case DCA16FA013 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA16FA013: NTSB API eventDate, eventTimeUtc and eventTimeUtcOffsetHours (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA16FA013
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA16FA013: NTSB API eventLatitude/eventLongitude
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA16FA013: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record DCA16FA013: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA16FA013: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA16FA013: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Dynamic International Airways Flight 405" and NTSB case DCA16FA013, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- 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.