Midwest Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 incident
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From General Mitchell International Airport (MKE) to Eppley Airfield (OMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99IA136
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-9
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N205ME
- Operator
- Midwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From General Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Milwaukee, WITo Eppley Airfield (OMA), Omaha, NE
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, elevator control › Frozen
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed in rain with a surface temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Upon reaching cruise altitude, the flight crew discovered that the elevator control '...was found to be frozen and would not move.' The pilot said that the aircraft was flown using primary and alternate trim until a descent was made to 'warmer air', and the '... elevator thawed out...' and normal control was regained. An inspection of the aircraft after the incident failed to reveal any anomalies with respect or the aircraft or aircraft systems. On two other occasions, Midwest Express Airlines (MWEA) DC9 aircraft have experienced elevator control difficulties. On these occurrences, the aircraft departed in rain with temperatures of 46 degrees Fahrenheit and 39 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. On one of the occurrences, MWEA maintenance personnel found ice accretions in the elevator control bay of the vertical stabilizer.
Probable cause
the frozen elevator control. Factors to the incident were the rain and the low temperature.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99IA136
- Event ID
- 20001205X00430
- Case number
- CHI99IA136
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5c38ddbe4c0c85e64d5a2a5dd98c33790a4afcb4b6e799e997f80349b34611bc; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:57:27.810Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N205ME; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, MWEA.