United Express Flight 5841
Beech 1900D · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Bismarck Municipal Airport (BIS) to ISN
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95IA066
- 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
Beech 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N118UX
- Operator
- United Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bismarck Municipal Airport (BIS), Bismarck, NDTo ISN
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Manufacturer › Inadequate quality control
- Manufacturer › Maintenance, inspection, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Williston, ND, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DURING AN INSTRUMENT DESCENT FROM CRUISE, THE ELEVATOR TRIM CABLE FAILED. THE CREW EXPERIENCED INCREASING NOSE DOWN PITCH REGARDLESS OF INPUT. A SAFE LANDING WAS ACCOMPLISHED BY BOTH PILOTS PULLING AFT ON THE YOKE TO OVERCOME PRESSURE, AND LOWERING FLAPS AND LANDING GEAR 50 AND 20 KNOTS ABOVE THEIR RESPECTIVE OPERATING SPEEDS TO REDUCE THE TRIM FORCES AND HELP SLOW THE AIRPLANE. INSPECTION REVEALED THAT THE TRIM CABLE HAD BEEN INCORRECTLY ROUTED AROUND A CABLE GUIDE DURING INITIAL PRODUCTION, AND HAD NOT REACHED THE FIRST REQUIRED INSPECTION WHICH WOULD HAVE ALLOWED THE DISCREPANCY TO BE DISCOVERED.
Probable cause
the improper installation and inadequate quality assurance inspection of the elevator trim cable during original manufacture, which resulted in fraying and failure of the cable prior to the first routine scheduled inspection of the system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95IA066
- Event ID
- 20001207X02832
- Case number
- CHI95IA066
- 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. 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: 5d17ff8ea9d019a72294a6d1a05e8d44b42204e565eb7d647282319860ef1a7a; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:04:25.957Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N118UX; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.