On March 13, a flight crew reported engine vibrations and an American Airlines flight was repurposed from its destination after a fire broke out when the engine landed. The National Transportation Safety Board said in a report this week that the engine leaked fuel due to loose and inappropriately installed parts. Despite many reported aviation safety accidents, air travel is safer than it was decades ago, experts say.
The American Airlines engine, which fell into flames after the aircraft detoured in March, has been found to have fuel leaks and improperly installed parts, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a report released Thursday.
The NTSB identified a damaged fan blade on the right side of the two-engine jet, a loose airflow control component installed behind it, and a loose rod end where fuel was leaking from the fitting. The report did not give any reason for the fire as the NTSB has not yet completed an investigation into the incident. The purpose of the document is to find the root cause of the incident, not to assign a blame.
On March 13, Flight 1006 reported engine vibrations from Colorado Springs Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport before decouping to Denver International Airport. According to the report, the Boeing 737-823 aircraft started a fire while taxiing the gate, causing “substantial damage.”
“They thought they had what we called a degraded engine,” Carrie Grant, an associate professor of aviation science at the Emburi Riddle University of Aviation, told Fortune. “It wasn't performance. It wasn't an engine that failed, but it didn't provide all the thrust and capabilities it could generate.”
Jet carried two flight crew members, four cabin crew members and 172 passengers, 12 of whom were hospitalized due to minor injuries. According to the report, Gate Lamp officials put out the fire on the right side of the plane a minute after it began. Passengers evacuated the aircraft to the top left and evacuated the slide from the right door of the jet.
Photos of the NTSB of the evacuated aircraft show burns and damage from the jet's right wing, main landing equipment, and landing gear wheels.
“The safety of our customers and team members is our number one priority, and we are working with the National Road Safety Board in our investigation into American Airlines' Flight 1006,” an American Airlines spokesperson said in a statement.
Management of safety incidents
The repurposing of March Flights was one of the highly scrutinized aviation safety incidents at the beginning of the year. In January, an American Airlines jet collided with an Army helicopter in Washington, DC, killing 67 people. Later that month, a small civilian plane crashed in northeastern Philadelphia, causing multiple deaths. Recently, Newar Liberty International Airport has experienced a series of radio outages, resulting in many flight delays and cancellations.
These incidents could have economic consequences for airlines. American Airlines reported on its first quarter revenue challenge to revive its corporate travel business as a result of “domestic leisure demand and tragic accidents in American Eagle flights 5342,” referring to the January incident.
Despite multiple slower safety, aviation experts claim they can still fly safely. Boeing has struggled with safety concerns over the past few years, but the fatal decline was significantly reduced in 2024, with a 40% drop in total accident rates and a 65% drop in fatal accident rates over the past 20 years, but increased by 20% during that same time.
Grant said that engine issues on the Flight 1006 are rare and will talk about the reliability of the CFM56-7B engine.
“The engine is very reliable,” he said. “The fact that we don't often see these situations happening frequently is a testament to the reliability of the motor. That's a very reliable part.”
He maintains that, taking into account the information from the time, the flight crew did what they “reasonably expected.” In particular, it is a situation that usually requires a depletion procedure, as they had to evacuate passengers from the jet while taxiing at the gate.
Combined with statistics that aviation accidents have actually decreased, the rarity of engine deterioration indicates the continued security of air travel, Grant said.
“If you go back and look at where we are today since the 50s, the trend in accidents is very small compared to the hundreds of thousands of hours of flight times each year,” he said. “Data doesn't support air travel being risky. It's actually the exact opposite.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
