Mesa Airlines de Havilland DHC-8-311 incident
de Havilland DHC-8-311 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) to Denver International Airport (DEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97IA074
- 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-8-311
- 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
- N430AW
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)To Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, CO
- 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 · 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
- 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, elevator trim/tab control › Disconnected
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Missing
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain said that he engaged the airplane's autopilot while passing through 10,000 feet mean sea level (msl). About 10 minutes later, the crew noticed illumination of a 'PITCH MISTRIM, TRIM NOSE DOWN' annunciator light. The captain attempted to trim the airplane using the manual elevator trim, but it would allow only limited movement. The crew declared an emergency, returned to Rapid City, and landed the airplane without further incident. A postincident inspection of the aft fuselage compartment revealed that one of the two master links (which held the chain and cable assembly to the electric elevator trim system) had come apart. The chain had subsequently entangled itself in the elevator trim cables. Further examination revealed that the 'C' clip (which snaps to the two posts of the master link base plate and held the master link cover plate in place) was missing.
Probable cause
a missing 'C' clip, which resulted in the master link coming apart, allowing the electric elevator trim chain and cable to become entangled in the elevator trim cables.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97IA074
- Event ID
- 20001208X07387
- Case number
- CHI97IA074
- 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: b056df65e6c4dfc4942b7203f7ecb2b9cb6dbe30b673bc9ac6a89629c7bb06b4; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:41:51.774Z.