Wings West Airlines Saab-Scania AB (Saab) 340B incident
Saab-Scania AB (Saab) 340B · Incident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From San Luis County Regional Airport (SBP) to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97IA180
- 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
Saab-Scania AB (Saab) 340B
- Aircraft type
- Saab Scania Ab (saab) 340
- 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
- N313AE
- Operator
- Wings West Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Luis County Regional Airport (SBP)To Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CA
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Compressor assembly › Contamination
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew reported that all pretakeoff checks were normal and that prior to setting takeoff power the Constant Thrust on Takeoff (CTOT) computer was set to 100-percent engine torque for takeoff. The ensuing takeoff was normal through liftoff and gear retraction; however, during initial climb the left engine experienced compressor stalling and lost power. As the crewmembers were executing the engine failure checklist, the right engine first increased power in Automatic Power Reserve (APR) and then began to similarly stall and lose power. After about 20 seconds the engines recovered sufficient power to enable the flight crew to remain airborne and return for landing on the departure runway. Review of the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) output and internal examination of each engine revealed that the engines had compressor stalled due to accumulated dirt and contaminants on the compressors. A review of the right engine DFDR data revealed that, while the left engine was stalling, the flight crew had retarded the right engine power lever past the 64-degree power lever angle position which tripped off the CTOT system. The resulting transient in fuel flow, in company with an atmospheric temperature inversion, reduced the stall margin of the right engine.
Probable cause
Compressor stalls of both engines due to in-service compressor contamination. Factors in the compressor stall of the right engine were an atmospheric temperature inversion and a transient fuel flow condition produced when the constant thrust on takeoff (CTOT) system was disabled by the pilot's inadvertent movement of the right engine power lever during execution of the emergency procedure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97IA180
- Event ID
- 20001208X07944
- Case number
- LAX97IA180
- 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: fc48162fd655d397a27b596a7607a7b3292671f212d1284d8fdca52fa7b90402; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:33:58.759Z.