Mesaba Aviation Flight 3098
de Havilland DHC-8-102 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Yeager Airport (CRW) to Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97IA075
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
de Havilland DHC-8-102
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-8
- 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
- N852MA
- Operator
- Mesaba Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yeager Airport (CRW)To Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA), Roanoke, VA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Flt control syst, wing spoiler system › Fractured
- Flt control syst, wing spoiler system › Jammed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain said that during takeoff rotation, the airplane rolled left. He noted no warning lights or horns before or during the event. He applied right control wheel and right rudder to stop the left roll. After the captain had the airplane's roll stabilized, he 'made a wide left pattern and returned to the departure airport.' The airplane was landed without further incident. A postincident inspection of the airplane revealed that the left inboard roll spoiler was 'jammed and partially deployed.' An examination and disassembly of the roll spoiler servoactuator revealed that a plug (PN A50993-1), which had been fusion-welded into the base of the piston (PN A50992-1), had separated and lodged between the base of the piston and the shims, restricting the piston's movement. Dowty Aerospace (the manufacturer) had recorded six previous failures of fusion welds in pistons on DHC-8 roll spoiler servoactuators before this incident.
Probable cause
a fractured fusion weld in the piston of the roll spoiler servoactuator, which allowed the plug at the base of the piston to separate and jam the piston. A factor relating to the incident was: the inadequate design of the airplane's roll spoiler servoactuator piston.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97IA075
- Event ID
- 20001208X07264
- Case number
- CHI97IA075
- 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: 5c16baabd6947c0b60c7ae6f56ab3736db561e837c56f2636542014a25861f8f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:43:03.631Z.