FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Based on the magnitude of the fire and billowing black smoke, aviation authorities initially said a Dynamic International Airways Boeing 767 suffered a fuel leak while on a taxiway at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Thursday.
That’s not to mention a deep puddle of jet fuel that had to be cleaned up from the accident scene.
At this point, however, the National Transportation Safety Board said it isn’t sure whether it was fuel or some other fluid that nurtured the fire, senior accident investigator Timothy LeBaron said Friday.
“We want to find out what caused the fire, that’s the big question,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of information at this point.”
While the investigation will encompass all aspects of the plane’s maintenance history, it likely will zero in on whether there was a fuel line problem or whether the plane was properly refueled prior to the accident Thursday, aviation authorities said.
“They will be looking at maintenance records and talking to the people who had worked on the plane,” Kent George, the airport director, said Friday.
George noted that no fire broke into the passenger cabin but rather erupted on the left wing and engine of the twin-engine widebody jetliner.
Of the 101 passengers onboard, about 23 suffered injuries, most while sliding down emergency evacuation chutes. Two remained hospitalized Friday.
Dynamic Flight 405 had intended to fly to Caracas, Venezuela, on Thursday afternoon. But as the plane was taxiing to the airport’s north runway, pilots in a jetliner behind it noticed what appeared to be fuel leaking from the 767’s left wing.
The Safety Board dispatched a team of four accident investigators to Fort Lauderdale to determine the exact source of the leak and what sparked the fire, which made national news.
One possible source could be the refueling port on the underside of the wing, as potentially it was not properly secured or the mechanisms that hold fuel in the wing tanks failed, aviation experts said.
An indication that the leak was substantial: About 45 to 50 gallons of jet fuel spilled onto the taxiway, George said. The fuel damaged the asphalt, forcing that area of the airport to be closed until repair crews can “mill down and replace” the asphalt in that area, he said.
To ultimately determine the cause of the leak – and fire – investigators will review the plane’s data recorders or “black boxes,” which are to be shipped to the safety board’s lab in Washington, D.C. Investigators also will interview the pilots and flight attendants to see how they responded to the fire. And they will talk to the mechanics who last inspected the airliner.
“They have to be very thorough,” George said. “They’ll look at all the operating systems of the aircraft.”
Headquartered in Greensboro, N.C., Dynamic International Airways has been in business since 2009.
Before Thursday’s fire, the Dynamic 767 jetliner had not been involved in any accidents since it was built in 1986, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
However, since 2011, the FAA has cited the company 27 times for a variety of violations, from quality control to drug-testing problems. In four instances, the company was cited for maintenance deficiencies.
FAA records also show that in the past five years, the airline has submitted 80 “service difficulty reports” that document various maintenance problems on its planes.
Most of those items were minor, for instance, noting that interior lights needed to be replaced. But others were more serious, such as wing flaps and an engine fire-test system not working correctly, or that corrosion was found in the tail section of one plane and the floor of another.
In all, the Boeing 767-200, the model that caught fire, holds up to 16,700 gallons – almost 57 tons – of jet fuel in its wing tanks.
Albert Johnston, a retired captain for a major airline, said the leak could have occurred in any fuel line leading from the fuel tanks to the engine.
“The aircraft carries a lot of fuel, and more than likely, it was under pressure,” he said. “There are several fuel pumps that increase the pressure to the engine.”
Because of that pressure, he added, the fuel was probably spraying out rather than dribbling.
The safety board will check whether the pilots encountered any kind of fuel problem while flying the plane to Fort Lauderdale. For now, that doesn’t appear to be the case, authorities said.
Because the ground crew didn’t notice a fuel leak while the plane was at the gate, the problem apparently developed after the jetliner started taxiing, authorities said.
Johnston, of Davie, Fla., who flew the Boeing 767 for about five years, said pilots have no direct indication of a fuel leak, such as a cockpit indicator light. Rather, they would only see the fuel tank gauges starting to go down.
The leak might have been the result of a maintenance problem or simply from a part failing from fatigue. “Parts get worn, no system is infallible,” he said.
According to tape recordings between the plane and the control tower, the pilots requested to return to the gate after being alerted to the leak by the other airliner, but that’s when the fire flared up and the crew ordered an emergency evacuation.
Doug Webster, the airport’s deputy director, credited the crew of the other plane for being aware of the leak and calling it in.
“That’s a general thing within the pilot community, they watch out for each other,” Webster said. “It’s an important part of our business.”
Although considered rare, fires have broken out on airliners operating out of U.S. airports about 85 times since 1965, according to safety board records.
Most were deemed minor incidents, such as one where a fire started inside an engine housing on a Delta 747 shortly after it took off from Atlanta in September 2014. The plane landed safely and no one was hurt.
Some are considered potentially disastrous. In September, fire erupted in the engine of a British Airways Boeing 777 as it was taking off from Las Vegas. Several of the 167 passengers and crew members on board were injured during the emergency evacuation after the plane landed.
After the fire broke out on the Dynamic airliner, airport fire rescue trucks surrounded the aircraft and doused it with foam. Although the plane had its own fire-suppression system, it’s unknown how effective it was, said Webster, the airport’s deputy director.
“We know it was discharged,” he said.
The plane, still with some of the passengers’ luggage onboard, has been towed to the northwest corner of the airport, where it is being scrutinized.
Dynamic International Airways flew some of the passengers on Flight 405 to Caracas on Friday and will fly the others Saturday and Sunday, said Greg Meyer, airport spokesman.
Martha Lucia Rueda, 60, of La Victoria Aragua, Venezuela, had been in Weston visiting her daughter and two grandchildren since Sept. 15. She wears a four-leaf clover charm on a necklace. “I’m not afraid to fly,” said Rueda, who was on Flight 405. “I like planes.”
Rueda said the flight was normal “until I heard shouting from another passenger. She heard a bang and saw the fire and told everyone, ‘We have to leave!’”
Rueda said she tried to run down the aisle but a disabled passenger slowed her down. Otherwise, she noted, “Passengers helped each other.”
Eventually Rueda got to a chute and slid to the ground, where she snapped a lot of photos of what was happening around her. “The firefighters were heroes for helping us,” she said. “Everyone was helping us at the airport, too.”
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