United Express Flight 5329
British Aerospace BAE-146-300 BAE-146-30 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95IA079
- 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
British Aerospace BAE-146-300 BAE-146-30
- 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
- N611AW
- Operator
- United Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo Dane County Regional Truax Field (MSN), WI
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Fire
- Fluid, fuel › Leak
- Fuel system, fuel flow divider/distributor › Cracked
- Fuel system, fuel flow divider/distributor › Fatigue
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight at 12,000 feet mean sea level, the no. 2 engine had a fire indication. The crew shut the engine down in flight and landed uneventfully. Investigation found a cracked left fuel manifold segment in the no. 2 engine. Metallurgical analysis established that the crack was characterized by fatigue striations, and that the crack occurred in a position on the manifold where there was an abrupt change in material thickness. There had been two previous occurrences of cracked manifolds reported by the operator and investigated by the NTSB. Prior to this incident, the manufacturer had taken three actions to resolve fuel manifold cracking; they were: 1.) introduce a redesign of manifold segments, 2.) agree to replace all operator manifold assemblies with the improved design, and 3.) introduce an eddy current inspection procedure for detecting manifold cracks. Following this incident, the FAA mandated more frequent inspection intervals and adoption of the new eddy-current inspection process for the unimproved manifolds.
Probable cause
A fuel leak in the no. 2 engine left fuel manifold segment due to a design defect which led to a fatigue crack.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95IA079
- Event ID
- 20001207X02833
- Case number
- CHI95IA079
- 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: 34e4dfbbbe68d2304735423eaa4a31e67ecf40c3c7527aca3f8aff0afbd608d0; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:04:02.031Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N611AW; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.