American Airlines Flight 383 (2016)
Boeing 767 323 · Uncontained engine failure of engine no. 2 during takeoff leading to fire
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD) to Miami International Airport (KMIA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA17FA021
- 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
- 170
- Survivors
- 170
- 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
- 21
- 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 767 323
- Flight
- AA383
- 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
- N345AN
- Operator
- American Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD), Chicago, ILTo Miami International Airport (KMIA), Miami, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2003)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Organizational issues › Development
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
American Airlines Flight 383 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois to Miami International Airport. On October 28, 2016, the Boeing 767 operating the flight suffered an uncontained engine failure on the second engine during takeoff that ignited a fire. The crew rejected the takeoff and evacuated everyone on board, with 21 occupants being injured—there were no fatalities. The aircraft was damaged beyond repair, making this accident the 17th hull loss of a Boeing 767.
The accident was caused by the rupture of a disk in the starboard engine, with one fragment piercing the fuel tank in the wing. The investigation revealed the need for more stringent directives for ultrasonic inspection of engine components.
Accident
On October 28, 2016, the Boeing 767-300ER operating the flight (registered N345AN) was accelerating for takeoff on runway 28R when the aircraft's right engine suffered an uncontained failure that led to a severe fire. The crew managed to abort the takeoff and evacuate everyone on board, while emergency services extinguished the fire. Twenty-one people were injured, and the aircraft was substantially damaged, written off, and stored.
The right engine had suffered a sudden rupture of the stage-2 disk while operating at takeoff power. The disk separated into two pieces, the smaller of which pierced the wing's fuel tank and then flew 2935 ft, falling through the roof of a United Parcel Service (UPS) facility and coming to rest on the building's floor. No one was injured in the UPS building.
Investigation and cause
Investigation and recommendations
In July 2017, GE Aviation issued a Service Bulletin recommending that airlines perform regular inspections of first- and second-stage disks of all CF6 engines built before 2000.
On January 30, 2018, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued its final report on the accident involving American 383. It traced the origin of the failure in disk 2 to a "discrete dirty white spot" that in the Board's judgement would have been undetectable, at manufacture or subsequent inspection, with the inspection techniques available. The NTSB made several safety recommendations as a result, not only with regards to the engine and aircraft but also to issues raised by the evacuation.
Text from the Wikipedia article “American Airlines Flight 383 (2016)” (revision 1374720127, 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
NTSB investigators traveled in support of this investigation and used data obtained from various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report.
The NTSB's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AccidentReports.aspx. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-18/01.
On October 28, 2016, about 1432 central daylight time, American Airlines flight 383, a Boeing 767-323, N345AN, had started its takeoff ground roll at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois, when an uncontained engine failure in the right engine and subsequent fire occurred. The flight crew aborted the takeoff and stopped the airplane on the runway, and the flight attendants initiated an emergency evacuation. Of the 2 flight crewmembers, 7 flight attendants, and 161 passengers on board, 1 passenger received a serious injury and 1 flight attendant and 19 passengers received minor injuries during the evacuation. The airplane was substantially damaged from the fire. The airplane was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the high-pressure turbine (HPT) stage 2 disk, which severed the main engine fuel feed line and breached the right main wing fuel tank, releasing fuel that resulted in a fire on the right side of the airplane during the takeoff roll. The HPT stage 2 disk failed because of low-cycle fatigue cracks that initiated from an internal subsurface manufacturing anomaly that was most likely not detectable during production inspections and subsequent in service inspections using the procedures in place. Contributing to the serious passenger injury was (1) the delay in shutting down the left engine and (2) a flight attendant's deviation from company procedures, which resulted in passengers evacuating from the left overwing exit while the left engine was still operating. Contributing to the delay in shutting down the left engine was (1) the lack of a separate checklist procedure for Boeing 767 airplanes that specifically addressed engine fires on the ground and (2) the lack of communication between the flight and cabin crews after the airplane came to a stop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: American Airlines Flight 383 (2016)
- Revision
- 1374720127 · 2026-09-13 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q28100218
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA17FA021
- Event ID
- 20161028X72837
- Case number
- DCA17FA021
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "American Airlines Flight 383 (2016)" (page 52126535, revision 1374720127); merged with NTSB case DCA17FA021 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA17FA021: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA17FA021
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA17FA021: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA17FA021: 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 DCA17FA021: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA17FA021: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA17FA021: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "American Airlines Flight 383 (2016)" and NTSB case DCA17FA021, 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. 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.