FedEx Express Flight 1406 was an American domestic cargo flight from

Memphis International Airport Memphis International Airport is a civil-military airport located southeast of downtown Memphis in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. It is the primary international airport serving Memphis. It covers and has four runways., effective A ...

, Memphis, Tennessee, to

Logan International Airport General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport — also known as Boston Logan International Airport — is an international airport located mostly in East Boston and partially in Winthrop, Massachusetts, United States. Covering , it has ...

in Boston, Massachusetts, that suffered an in-flight cargo fire over New York on September 5, 1996. The three crew members and two passengers on board successfully evacuated after an emergency landing at

Stewart International Airport New York Stewart International Airport – colloquially known as Stewart International Airport, is a public/military airport in Orange County, New York, United States. It is in the southern Hudson Valley, west of Newburgh, south of Kingston ...

in Newburgh, New York. After the evacuation, the DC-10 was consumed by fire. After an extensive investigation, the

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...

(NTSB) couldn't determine what caused the fire. Nevertheless, the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...

(FAA) made recommendations to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft involved, manufactured in 1975, was a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10CF registered as N68055 with

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

37809. The aircraft name was Chandra Renee. It had logged onto more than 38271 airframe hours and 17818 take-off and landing cycles and was equipped with three General Electric CF6-6D engines.

Crew

There were three crew members and two passengers on Flight 1406. The

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

(47), had 12,344 flight hours, 2,504 of which were logged on the DC-10; the First Officer (41), had 6,535 flight hours, 1,338 of which were logged on the DC-10; and the

Flight Engineer A flight engineer (FE), also sometimes called an air engineer, is a member of an aircraft's flight crew who is responsible for monitoring and operating its complex aircraft systems. In the early era of aviation, the position was sometimes referr ...

(45) had 3,704 flight hours, 188 of which were logged on the DC-10. Also on board were two FedEx employees (including

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veteran and

Eastern Air Lines Eastern Air Lines (also colloquially known as Eastern) was a major airline in the United States that operated from 1926 to 1991. Before its dissolution, it was headquartered at Miami International Airport in an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade ...

pilot Frederick S. Olmsted Jr.) sitting in jumpseats.

Flight

Flight 1406 departed from

at 3:42am, en route to

, Boston, Massachusetts, with an estimated time of arrival (ETA) of 7:42am. At 5:42am, Flight 1406 was cruising at above the state of New York when the ''Cabin Smoke Fire Alarm'' sounded in the cockpit. Smoke detectors for several zones of the aircraft's main deck cargo compartment alerted the pilots of suspected smoke, prompting the crew members and passengers to don their smoke masks. Aircraft systems began to fail, and the crew noticed smoke entering the cockpit. The crew informed Boston Air Traffic Control (ATC) about the fire situation; ATC suggested that Flight 1406 could make an emergency landing at Albany County Airport, ahead, or to land at

in Newburgh, behind. The crew decided to land at Stewart. At 5:49am the aircraft was on approach to Stewart International Airport, where airport fire services prepared for the DC-10 to land on Runway 27. The aircraft successfully landed at the airport at 5:54am and turned onto a taxiway, where it came to a stop for the fire services to engage. The crew and the employees tried to evacuate the aircraft, but the doors and cockpit windows could not be opened because the fuselage was still pressurized. The captain then de-pressurized the aircraft and all occupants then exited safely; the flight crew through a cockpit window and the passengers through one of the forward fuselage cabin doors. The fire crews found the cargo prevented them from accessing the source of the smoke from inside the cabin and forty minutes after the aircraft landed the fire burned through the fuselage skin; the fire was extinguished four hours after the aircraft landed. All five people on board survived, though two members of the flight crew received minor injuries.

Investigation

Because the fire damage was extensive, the

(NTSB) investigation was unable to find a source of ignition. On 22 July 1998, the NTSB released its report, concluding, ''"the probable cause of this accident was an in-flight cargo fire of undetermined origin"''.

References