- On March 13, an American Airlines flight was diverted from its destination after the flight crew reported engine vibrations, and its engine caught fire once it landed. The National Transportation Safety Board said in a report this week the engine leaked fuel because of loose and improperly installed parts. Despite numerous reported aviation safety incidents, air travel is safer than it was decades ago, experts say.
An American Airlines engine that burst into flames after its aircraft was diverted in March was 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, as well as a loose airflow control component that was installed backward and a loose rod end that caused fuel to leak from the fitting. The report did not give a reason for the fire, as the NTSB has not yet finished its investigation on the incident. The purpose of the document is to find the root cause of the incident, not assign blame for it.
On March 13, Flight 1006 en route from the Colorado Springs Airport to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport diverted to Denver International Airport after the flight crew reported engine vibrations. The Boeing 737-823 aircraft caught fire while taxiing to the gate, incurring “substantial damage,” according to the report.
“They thought they had what we would call the degraded engine,” Cary Grant, an associate professor of aeronautical science at Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University, told Fortune. “It wasn’t performing. It wasn’t a failed engine, but it wasn’t providing all the thrust and capability that it could produce.”
The jet was carrying two flight crew members, four cabin crew members, and 172 passengers, 12 of whom were hospitalized for minor injuries. According to the report, gate ramp personnel extinguished the fire on the right side of the plane one minute after it began. Passengers evacuated the aircraft onto the left overwing and a slide from the jet’s right door.
NTSB’s photos of the evacuated aircraft show burn marks and damage from the jet’s right wing, main landing gear, and landing gear wheel well.
“The safety of our customers and team members is our top priority, and we are cooperating with the National Transportation Safety Board in its investigation of American Airlines flight 1006,” an American Airlines spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.
Managing safety incidents
The March flight diversion was one of several highly scrutinized aviation safety incidents early in the year. In January, an American Airlines jet collided with an Army helicopter in Washington, D.C., killing 67 people. Later that month, a small, private plane crashed in Northeast Philadelphia, resulting in multiple deaths. Most recently, Newark Liberty International Airport experienced a series of radio outages, which resulted in a slew of flight delays and cancellations.
These incidents can have financial repercussions for airlines. American Airlines reported in its first-quarter earnings challenges to resuscitate its corporate travel business as a result of “economic uncertainty that pressured domestic leisure demand and the tragic accident of American Eagle Flight 5342,” referring to the January incident.
Despite the multiple safety blunders, aviation experts maintain it is still safe to fly. Boeing—though it has struggled in the past couple of years with safety concerns—reported a significant decline in fatalities in 2024, saying there has been a 40% decline in total accident rates and 65% decline in fatal accident rates in the past 20 years, while the number of flights has increased 20% in that same time period.
Grant said the engine issues with Flight 1006 are rare, speaking to the dependability of its CFM56-7B engine.
“The engine is extremely reliable,” he said. “The fact that we don’t see situations like this occurring frequently is testament to the reliability of the motors. It’s an extremely reliable part.”
He maintains the flight crew did what was “reasonably expected” of them, given the information they had at the time—especially since they had to evacuate passengers from the jet when it was taxiing at a gate, a situation that usually necessitates deplaning procedures.
Combined with statistics that aviation accidents have actually decreased, the rarity of the engine degradation points to the continued security of air travel, Grant said.
“If we go back and look from the ‘50s on to where we’re at today, the accident trend is very, very small compared to the hundreds of thousands, millions of hours of flight time that are being flown every year,” he said. “The data does not support that air travel is riskier. It’s actually just the opposite.”
