Mesaba Airlines Fairchild SA227-AC incident
Fairchild SA227-AC · Incident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96IA066
- 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 SA227-AC
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild SA227
- 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
- N159MC
- Operator
- Mesaba Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport / Wold–Chamberlain Field (MSP), Minneapolis, MNTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Flt control syst, elevator control › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On short final, the crew noticed that the airplane had restricted up-elevator movement. They initiated a go-around and used power to control pitch for landing. Excessive descent rate and airspeed resulted in a hard landing. Postincident examination revealed a loose upper elevator stop bolt that had contacted a stringer, preventing further movement of the control column. Sixteen flights earlier, maintenance records show extensive work done to the elevator quadrant. During this work, hardware was 'loosely installed' on the quadrant so as to not be lost. The position of a nut run down on the bolt is close to the appearance of a nut properly torqued.
Probable cause
inadequate maintenance installation and inspection of the elevator flight control system which led to restricted flight control elevator movement due to a loose bolt.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96IA066
- Event ID
- 20001207X04970
- Case number
- CHI96IA066
- 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: 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: 1acf08b0fe0feef1edc12710da2e246bb6179c6cc435c5f6e164e36eeb22c857; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:55:04.701Z.