Last week, a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767 flying from 
New York JFK Airport to Los Angeles International (LAX) had to divert to Salt Lake City (SLC) in Utah after its crew was forced to shut one of the widebody twinjet’s engines down in-flight. The incident grounded the jet in question for around a day and a half.
Still, by the end of the working week, the aircraft was back in the skies, and has since operated a wide range of both domestic and international flights, showcasing the versatility of the 
Boeing 767-300ER in Delta Air Lines’ fleet and network in spite of its advanced age. Let’s take a look and see what happened.
Transcontinental Diversion
Delta Air Lines flight DL365 is a regularly scheduled commercial passenger flight that is timed to depart from its New York hub at John F Kennedy International Airport every day at 17:00 local time. Its destination is Los Angeles International Airport in Southern California, where it is scheduled to arrive at 20:34.
Accounting for the time difference between these two coastal US cities, this gives the service a planned block time of six hours and 34 minutes, although it is far from the longest domestic flight in the country. However, on September 10, it got a whole lot longer as, according to the Aviation Herald, a reported engine failure on the Boeing 767 operating the flight forced the crew to shut it down and divert to SLC.
Simple Flying has reached out to Delta Air Lines for further information regarding this incident. We will update our coverage when we receive a comment or statement from the carrier.
Diving Deeper Into The Details
According to historical tracking data made available by Flightradar24, the aircraft operating Delta Air Lines flight DL365 on September 10, 2025, was a Boeing 767-300ER that bore the registration N178DN. As detailed in the table below, this veteran twinjet departed the Big Apple 46 minutes late last Wednesday.
|
Delta Air Lines Flight DL365 On September 10, 2025 |
||
|---|---|---|
|
Departure from New York |
Arrival |
|
|
Planned |
17:00 |
20:34 in Los Angeles |
|
Actual |
17:46 |
20:35 in Salt Lake City |
However, its delay would soon get all the more extreme when, at an altitude of 36,000 feet and around 90 nautical miles (166.7 km) to the north of Salt Lake City, the crew announced that they had had to shut down the aircraft’s left-hand PW4060 turbofan due to an engine failure. The stricken jet was subsequently diverted to the Utah hub, where it touched down, as noted above, at 20:35 local time on Wednesday.
Here, the Aviation Herald notes, it made a safe landing on the facility’s 3,658-meter (12,002 feet) long runway 16L, just over half an hour after the problem with the aircraft’s port engine initially arose. As a result of the incident, the Boeing 767-300ER operating the flight was taken out of service for more than a day.
All About The Aircraft In Question
According to present fleet data made available by ch-aviation, N178N is one of 61 Boeing 767 family aircraft that Delta Air Lines currently has at its disposal. This figure consists of 21 767-400ERs aged 24.8 years old on average and 40 767-300ERs aged 29.2 years old on average, with N178DN being an example of the latter.
As it happens, this particular aircraft is Delta Air Lines’ sixth-oldest unit of the Boeing 767-300ER at the time of writing, with the veteran widebody twinjet clocking in at 34.7 years old. It first flew back in January of 1991, and was delivered to the SkyTeam founding member, which ordered it in November 1989, three months later. According to aeroLOPA, it has 36 business and 175 economy seats onboard.
While deeper details concerning the engine issues that forced the aircraft to divert to Salt Lake City while flying from New York to LAX last week, the problem appears to have been solved relatively quickly. Indeed, after just a day and a half on the ground in Utah, it repositioned back to New York as flight DL9963 on the morning of September 12, and re-entered service with a flight to Prague that evening.
