Brake failure, weather conditions and other factors are under investigation as possible causes of the Delta Air Lines Flight 1086 runway accident that injured 23 of the 127 passengers aboard during landing.
The plane veered off the runway as it approached LaGuardia Airport in New York from Atlanta, Ga. at about 11:18 a.m. on March 5, drifted left and destroyed about 940 feet of perimeter fence. The left wing and the front of the plane were damaged, including a breach of the left wing fuel tank.
The National Transportation Safety Board is overseeing the investigation into where the landing went wrong. Three planes had landed successfully on the same runway over a span of several minutes prior, the NTSB said. The antiskid, autobrake, and thrust reverser systems of Flight 1086 are undergoing testing as of March 9, in order to determine whether there was any mechanical failure.
The flight crew reported that the runway appeared all white when the plane emerged from the cloud cover and that they landed based on the braking action reports received by air traffic control from the previous flights, which listed conditions as “good.”
The automatic spoilers did not deploy, but were deployed manually by the first officer. Auto brakes were set to ‘max,’ but the crew says they did not feel any wheel brake deceleration when they came in for the landing.
Degradations in signal quality around the time the airplane left the runway has made some investigation of the Flight Data more difficult, but it and the Cockpit Voice Recorder are still being examined. A meteorologist is also looking into whether the weather might have been a factor.
The plane, a Boeing MD-88, came into Delta Air Lines’ possession on Dec. 30, 1987 and had received its last overnight service check on March 2. All injured passengers had been released from the hospital as of March 9.
This investigation is ongoing.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense