USAir Boeing 737-300 incident
Boeing 737-300 · Incident: fire during takeoff
From Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) to Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC93IA017
- 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
Boeing 737-300
- 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
- N586US
- Operator
- USAir
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT)To Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), Charlotte, NC
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Fire
- 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, blade › Fatigue
- Compressor assembly, blade › Fractured
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Pittsburgh, PA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE AIR CARRIER B 737 300 WAS ON TAKEOFF ROLL, WHEN THE AIRCREW WAS ADVISED BY OTHER AIRPLANES THAT 'SMOKE AND FLAMES WERE...COMING FROM THE RIGHT ENGINE.' THE CREW ABORTED THE TAKEOFF, STOPPED THE AIRPLANE ON THE RUNWAY AND ORDERED AN EVACUATION BY THE EMERGENCY SLIDES. NONE OF THE 5 CREWMEMBERS NOR THE 128 PASSENGERS WERE INJURED. THE ENGINE FIRE WAS SUPPRESSED WHEN THE ENGINE WAS SHUTDOWN. THE FAILURE WAS CONTAINED TO THE ENGINE INTERIOR. EXAMINATION OF THE ENGINE REVEALED A HIGH CYCLE FATIGUE FAILURE OF 2 BLADES OF THE STAGE 1 HIGH PRESSURE COMPRESSOR.
Probable cause
THE HIGH CYCLE FATIGUE FAILURE OF BLADES ON THE STAGE 1 HIGH PRESSURE COMPRESSOR, WHICH RESULTED IN BLADE FRACTURE AND SUBSEQUENT INTERNAL ENGINE DAMAGE AND FIRE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC93IA017
- Event ID
- 20001211X15931
- Case number
- NYC93IA017
- 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: 3c6768f8c40e0efd7a57d10e3ac6551880c9deec064e7beb295afd9b3779974a; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:43:27.889Z.