TACA Flight 110

The aircraft, a Boeing 737-3T0 (tail number N75356, serial number 23838, the 1,505th Boeing 737 manufactured), had first flown on January 26, 1988. The airliner had been in service with TACA for about two weeks[1] after it was acquired from Polaris Aircraft Leasing in May 1988.

The captain of the flight was Carlos Dardano. At 29 years of age, Dardano had amassed 13,410 flight hours, with almost 11,000 of these as pilot in command. Earlier in his career, he had lost an eye to crossfire on a short flight to El Salvador, where civil war was raging at the time.[2] The first officer, Dionisio Lopez, was also very experienced, with more than 12,000 flight hours logged. Captain Arturo Soley, an instructor pilot, was also in the cockpit, monitoring the performance of the new 737.

The flight proceeded normally, taking off from Belize City's Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport and flying over the Gulf of Mexico toward the Louisiana coast.

Investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) revealed that during descent from FL 350 (about 35,000 feet or 11,000 metres) in preparation for their impending arrival at New Orleans International Airport, Captain Dardano and First Officer Lopez noticed areas of light to moderate precipitation in their path, depicted as green and yellow areas on their weather radar, as well as "some isolated red cells" indicative of heavy precipitation to both sides of their intended flight path.[3]

The flight entered clouds at FL 300 (about 30,000 feet or 9,100 metres), the crew selecting "continuous ignition" and turning on engine anti-ice to protect their turbofan engines from the effects of precipitation and icing, either of which is capable of causing a flameout, where the engines lose all power. Despite flying a route between the two areas of heavy precipitation shown on radar, they encountered heavy rain, hail, and turbulence. Passing through 16,500 feet (5,000 m), both engines flamed out, leaving the jet gliding with neither engine producing thrust or electrical power. The auxiliary power unit (APU) was started as the plane descended through 10,500 feet (3,200 m), restoring electrical power. While attempts to "windmill start" the engines using the airflow generated by the plane's descent were unsuccessful, the pilots were later able to start them using the engine starters, which were powered by the APU. However, neither engine would accelerate to normal idle speed, much less to a point where it was producing meaningful thrust. Attempts to advance the throttles only resulted in overheating of the engines, so they were once more shut down to avoid catastrophic failure.

At this point, the pilots began to prepare for a ditching, as no runway was reachable with the remaining altitude. Dardano lined up with a canal and prepared the aircraft for a water landing. During this time, Lopez spotted a grass levee to the right of the canal, and suggested that the landing be attempted there. Dardano agreed, and landed the airliner in an unpowered glide adjacent the narrow grass levee on the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) industrial complex, in eastern New Orleans, near the Intracoastal Waterway and Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.[3]

Engine turbine damage from TACA Flight 110

NTSB investigators determined that the aircraft had inadvertently flown into a level 4 thunderstorm and that water ingestion had caused both engines to flame out despite them being certified to meeting Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards for water ingestion. The aircraft suffered mild hail damage, and its right-side (number 2) engine was damaged from overheating.[3]

To avoid similar problems in the future, the engine manufacturer, CFM International, modified the CFM56 engine by adding a sensor to force the combustor to continuously ignite under heavy rain or hail conditions. Other modifications were made to the engine nose cone and the spacing of the fan blades to better deflect hail away from the engine core. Also, additional bleed doors were added to drain more water from the engine.

The incident was featured in Nowhere to Land, the 11th episode of the 11th season of Mayday (Air Crash Investigation).[2]

• CFM International CFM56 engine flaw
• List of airline flights that required gliding
  • 1977: Southern Airways Flight 242
  • 1983: Gimli Glider
  • 2001: Air Transat Flight 236
  • 2002: Garuda Indonesia Flight 421
  • 2009: US Airways Flight 1549
  • 2019: Ural Airlines Flight 178

External video

"Miraculous Plane Landing on New Orleans Levee". Smithsonian Channel. April 10, 2013.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to TACA Flight 110.

• NTSB Final Report
  • NTSB Synopsis
• accident overview - Federal Aviation Administration
• Garrison, Peter (September 2006). "Flameout". Air & Space Magazine.
• Incident description at the Aviation Safety Network
• Description of the NASA Michoud Facility and Air Traffic Controller's account of the event