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SkyWest Airlines Flight 5435

4 Apr 1994 · Ontario, CA, United States

Fairchild SA-227AC · Incident: decompression en route

From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM)

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Event

NTSB case
LAX94IA181
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
Charter & commuter
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

Fairchild SA-227AC

Aircraft type
Fairchild SA-227
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
N174SW
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM), Yuma, AZ
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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
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
Decompression
DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
Minor

Cause areas

  • Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
  • Window, flight compartment window/windshield › Fractured

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The aircraft was climbing at 1,000 feet per minute to a cruising altitude of 21,000 feet. Passing 19,800 feet, a loud 'bang' was heard and the captain was partially sucked through the broken left side window. After about 4 seconds, he was able to pull himself back into the aircraft unassisted. He declared an emergency and landed the aircraft without further incident. A review of the maintenance records revealed that an applicable airworthiness directive requiring an inspection of the windows was complied with within the last 143.8 flight hours. The technical representative for Fairchild stated that maintenance personnel who conducted the AD inspection and service bulletin inspections may have failed to detect the crack, due to the subtle inspection procedures employed. The approved inspection procedures allow for two methods: 1) removal of the outer frame retainer for direct viewing of the screw holes, and 2) using a 90-degree prism seated in mineral oil for an indirect view of the screw holes. The airline was using the second method.

Probable cause

the failure of maintenance personnel to detect a crack in the windscreen which exceeded the operational limits for pressurized flight. A factor in the accident was the inadequacy of the inspection method published by the manufacturer.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record LAX94IA181
Event ID
20001206X01120
Case number
LAX94IA181
Dataset
historical-pre2008
Source SHA-256
89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
  • 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-04-05.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: b1a0a0f27edc1829bb84c3ae94e349f5f0d63831c7b069088dbb2d1eabc49118; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:18:42.461Z.