American Airlines Flight 96

American Airlines Flight 96 (AA96/AAL96) was a regular domestic flight operated by American Airlines from Los Angeles to New York via Detroit and Buffalo. On June 12, 1972, after takeoff from Detroit, Michigan, the left rear cargo door of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 operating the flight blew open and broke off above Windsor, Ontario. The accident is thus sometimes referred to as the Windsor incident, although according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) it was technically an accident, not an incident.

The rapid decompression in the cargo hold caused a partial collapse of the passenger compartment floor, which in turn jammed or restricted some of the control cables which were connected to various flight control hydraulic actuators. The jamming of the rudder control cable caused the rudder to deflect to its maximum right position. The control cables to the number two engine in the tail were severed, causing that engine to shut down. There was no rupture of any hydraulic system, so the pilots still had control of the ailerons, the right elevator, and the horizontal stabilizer. Because the right elevator cable was partially restricted, however, both pilots had to apply back pressure on the yoke for the landing flare. Additionally, the approach and landing had to be made at a higher speed to prevent the sink rate from becoming excessive. The tendency to turn right was offset by using 45 degrees of left aileron, combined with asymmetric thrust of the two wing engines. In spite of the partial restriction of the controls, the pilots managed to return to Detroit Metropolitan Airport and land safely, with no major injuries.

The cause was traced to the cargo door latching system, which had failed to close and latch the door completely without any indication to the crew that it was not safely closed. A separate locking system was supposed to ensure this could not happen but proved to be inadequate. McDonnell Douglas instituted a number of minor changes to the system in an attempt to avoid a repeat. These were unsuccessful. On March 3, 1974, the rear cargo door of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 experienced the same failure and blew open, causing the aircraft to lose all control and crash in a forest near Paris, France. This crash killed all 346 people on board, making it the deadliest accident in aviation history until the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster when two Boeing 747s collided in the Canary Islands, killing 583, and the deadliest single-aircraft accident until the 1985 crash of Japan Air Lines Flight 123 in Honshu, Japan, causing 520 deaths.