Delta Flight DL88 Lands at LAX With Hydraulic Problems, and the A350 Stays Grounded for More Than a Day

Delta Air Lines flight DL88 from Hong Kong landed safely in Los Angeles on the morning of November 9, 2026, after its crew reported hydraulic problems on approach. The Airbus A350-900, registration N524DN, was still on the ground at LAX more than a day later, The Aviation Herald reported.

Tracking data from Flightradar24 shows the jet left Hong Kong at 11:00 a.m. local time and touched down at 6:45 a.m. Pacific time, about an hour ahead of schedule, after nearly 12 hours in the air.

AeroCorner found no public statement on the flight from Delta or the FAA at the time of writing. The number of people on board has not been reported.

A landing with the gear doors open

According to The Aviation Herald, the A350 touched down on runway 25L with its landing gear doors open. The crew vacated the runway and stopped clear of it so emergency services could inspect the aircraft.

The crew asked whether their flaps were still down, and the responders confirmed that both the flaps and the gear doors were down. About 15 minutes later, the jet taxied to the apron.

Which of the A350’s hydraulic systems was affected, and what caused the problem, has not been made public.

More than a day on the ground at LAX

The Aviation Herald reported that N524DN was still parked in Los Angeles about 27 hours after landing. Delta covered the jet’s next scheduled trip, the DL87 departure to Hong Kong scheduled for late on November 9, with another A350, N522DZ, according to Flightradar24’s DL87 history.

At the time of writing, Flightradar24 listed N524DN for the DL87 departure scheduled for 11:50 p.m. Pacific time on November 10, a sign Delta expects to return it to service. That flight had not yet left.

The aircraft is young. The FAA registry lists N524DN as a 2024-built A350-941 registered to Delta Air Lines.

DL88 is part of Delta’s daily Los Angeles to Hong Kong service, which the airline announced in July 2025 and launched on June 6, 2026, with its flagship Airbus A350-900.

How the A350’s hydraulics are built

Airliners use pressurized hydraulic fluid to move flight controls, landing gear and brakes, as AeroCorner explains in how airplanes use hydraulics. The A350 does it with fewer circuits than older designs.

Airbus says the A350 has a two-circuit hydraulic system running at 5,000 psi, in place of the three circuits at 3,000 psi found on more conventional jets. Airbus credits the simpler layout with cutting maintenance costs.

Electricity takes the place of the third circuit. Airbus calls the layout “2H2E”: two hydraulic systems backed up by two electrical systems, first used on the A380 and now standard on the A350.

Its key part is the electro-hydrostatic actuator, which moves a control surface using electrical energy instead of hydraulic power.

Why DL88’s gear doors stayed open has not been explained. On Airbus’s A320 family, the backup gravity extension, used when the normal hydraulic system cannot lower the gear, leaves the doors open and takes away nose-wheel steering.

That is what happened to Swiss flight LX2142, which lowered its gear by gravity at Valencia in September. Whether the DL88 crew used an equivalent procedure on the A350 has not been reported.

AeroCorner covered a similar A350 case in August, when a British Airways A350 squawked 7700 for a possible hydraulic failure nearing Heathrow and landed safely.