Lone Star Airlines Fairchild SA227-DC incident
Fairchild SA227-DC · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Enid Woodring Regional Airport (WDG) to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96IA248
- 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-DC
- 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
- N850LS
- Operator
- Lone Star Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Enid Woodring Regional Airport (WDG)To Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), Dallas, TX
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Fuel system, pump › Disabled
- Reduction gear assembly, accessory drive bearing › Failure
- Reduction gear assembly, accessory drive gear › Sheared
- Reduction gear assembly, accessory drive shaft › Disengaged
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Enid, OK, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced an uncommanded shut down of the right engine during initial climb to altitude. An emergency was declared, and an uneventful single engine landing was made at the departure airport. Subsequent to the incident, metallic chips were found on the chip detector. The bearings of the accessory gear housing assembly (P/N 3103601-6) was missing all of the balls. Fragments of these ball bearings were found in the bottom of the engine case. Examination of the bearing races revealed pitting and scoring. According to the operator's diagnostics, the disintegration of the bearings allowed the gear shaft to drop down and contact the gears of the accessory drive idler gear assembly. Subsequently, the fuel pump drive gear was not driven, causing the engine to be starved of fuel. Inspection of the idler gear assembly revealed sheared gear teeth. Examination of the gearbox oiling system, revealed no evidence of failure or thermal distress prior to the initial bearing failure. The engine manufacturer had recently issued Service Bulletins addressing the installation of heavier duty gear assemblies in applicable engine installations.
Probable cause
failure of the accessory drive bearing, causing the accessory drive gear teeth to shear and disengage the fuel pump accessory drive shaft, resulting in a disabled fuel pump and subsequent fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96IA248
- Event ID
- 20001208X05963
- Case number
- FTW96IA248
- 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: 19c233fdc6fff4016d2b3501d0ad4339c52fe4995d4602422e7896b78b1a8e6f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:49:47.695Z.