United Air Lines Flight 422
Boeing 737-222 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA030
- 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
- Accident
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737-222
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N9038U
- Operator
- United Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), MI
- 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 · 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
- None
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Grand Rapids, MI, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew received a engine fire warning during an approach to land. The crew performed engine fire emergency procedures and a single engine landing was accomplished. After landing, it was reported that the smoke was coming out of the #2 engine and the Captain ordered an evacuation of the airplane. The exit door 1R slide deployed automatically when the door was opened. The slides for exit doors 1L and 2R did not automatically inflate. Both slides were inflated manually. A passenger exited out of the 1L door and fractured her ankle. According to one of the flight attendants, the passenger did not jump out the exit as directed, but rather sat down, and slid out. Another flight attendant could not rotate door handle on exit door 2L. With assistance from a passenger the door was opened at which time the escape slide inflated into the airplane blocking both of the aft exists. Investigation revealed the operator received approval for an alternate mean of compliance for AD 85-25-04 addressing 737-100, 200, and 300 escape slide modifications, testing and inspections.
Probable cause
a passenger sustained a fractured ankle during an emergency evacuation for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA030
- Event ID
- 20001208X07000
- Case number
- CHI97FA030
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-11-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a90b4c12352420ea170e7103de9004925c8b093eb1a2c7d186a7879d6a773d4d; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:45:24.641Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N9038U; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.