American Eagle Short Brothers SD3-60 incident
Short Brothers SD3-60 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From University of Illinois Willard Airport (CMI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI90IA084
- 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
Short Brothers SD3-60
- Aircraft type
- Short Brothers SD3
- 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
- N361MQ
- Operator
- American Eagle
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From University of Illinois Willard Airport (CMI), Champaign, ILTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Turbine assembly, turbine blade › Failure, total
- Turbine assembly, turbine blade › Fatigue
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Chicago, IL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRCRAFT WAS ON FINAL FOR LANDING AT O'HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. OVER THE LANDING THRESHOLD THE PILOT REPORTED THAT HE HEARD A SERIES OF SMALL POPS AND A LOUD POP FROM THE NUMBER 1 ENGINE FOLLOWED BY A TORQUE DECAY. THE ENGINE WAS FEATHERED ON TOUCHDOWN. THE INVESTIGATION REVEALED A FATIGUE FAILURE OF A TURBINE BLADE IN THE FIRST STAGE POWER TURBINE.
Probable cause
FATIGUE FAILURE OF A FIRST STAGE POWER TURBINE BLADE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI90IA084
- Event ID
- 20001212X22521
- Case number
- CHI90IA084
- 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: investigation status. 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: 3ba05a1957a933d5b1fcbdfc63d1f8990997302c0a335c18a047064f15b364cf; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:04:43.416Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N361MQ; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.