United Express Flight 5272
British Aerospace BAE-146-200 BAE-146-20 · Incident: fire en route
From an unrecorded airport to Blue Grass Airport (LEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI94IA134
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
British Aerospace BAE-146-200 BAE-146-20
- Aircraft type
- British Aerospace BAE-146
- 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
- N609AW
- Operator
- United Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Blue Grass Airport (LEX), Lexington, KY
- 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 · climb to 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
- Fire
- 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
- Fuel system, nozzle › Loose
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During climb after takeoff the number two engine fire warning activated. The flight crew secured the engine and completed the emergency checklist. The captain declared an emergency and returned to the airport. After landing, the captain directed the first officer, and the fire department to visually inspect the number two engine. No fire damage was evident. The airplane was taxied to the gate and the passengers were deplaned. Examination of the engine revealed a loose fuel nozzle in the right hand fuel manifold on the number two engine.
Probable cause
a loose fuel nozzle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI94IA134
- Event ID
- 20001206X01070
- Case number
- CHI94IA134
- 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: 85794402998758cb1af63bb75a119befc1358a2fb9ac8d0cf903f30b49e33b72; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:18:10.754Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N609AW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.