Accident · 1996-07-06

What the record says

Event date

1996-07-06

Event type

Accident

Highest injury level

Fatal injury

Aircraft

McDonnell Douglas MD-88 (N927DA)

Operating rule

Part 121

Operator

operator not named in the NTSB record

Probable cause

the fracture of the left engine's front compressor fan hub, which resulted from the failure of Delta Air Lines' fluorescent penetrant inspection process to detect a detectable fatigue crack initiating from an area of altered microstructure that was created during the drilling process by Volvo for Pratt & Whitney and that went undetected at the time of manufacture. Contributing to the accident was the lack of sufficient redundancy in the in-service inspection program. (NTSB Report AAR-98/01)

Flight crew

Flight-crew details for this event aren't in the NTSB database extract we hold (its coverage starts with 2008 events) — a gap in our data, not an absence of crew.