Air Wisconsin British Aerospace BAE 146-200 BAE 146-20 incident
British Aerospace BAE 146-200 BAE 146-20 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From an unrecorded airport to Aspen-Pitkin County Airport (Sardy Field) (ASE)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN91IA026
- 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
British Aerospace BAE 146-200 BAE 146-20
- Aircraft type
- British Aerospace BAE-146
- 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
- N609AW
- Operator
- Air Wisconsin
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Aspen-Pitkin County Airport (Sardy Field) (ASE), Aspen, 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
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, aaip/progressive program, not identified
- Turbine assembly, turbine blade › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AS THE FLIGHT WAS CLIMBING THROUGH FL210, THE CREW HEARD AN EXPLOSION AND FLAMES WERE SEEN COMING FROM THE TAILPIPE OF NO.3 ENGINE. THE ENGINE WAS SECURED AND THE AIRPLANE LANDED UNEVENTFULLY. EXAMINATION REVEALED AN UNCONTAINED FAILURE. A PREEXISTING CRACK WAS FOUND IN THE NO.12 BLADE ON THE 4TH STAGE TURBINE WHEEEL. MAINTENANCE RECORDS DISCLOSED THE WHEEL HAD RECENTLY UNDERGONE A DYE PENETRANT INSPECTION. NO CRACKS WERE NOTED. THE ENGINE HAD ACCRUED 99 CYCLES AND 66 HOURS OVER A PERIOD OF 13 DAYS FROM THE TIME OF THE LAST INSPECTION AND THE TIME OF THE ENGINE FAILURE.
Probable cause
THE CATASTROPHIC FAILURE OF THE NO.12 BLADE ON THE 4TH STAGE TURBINE WHEEL, AND FAILURE OF COMPANY MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL TO IDENTIFY THE PREEXISTING CRACK DURING MAINTENANCE INSPECTION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN91IA026
- Event ID
- 20001212X24752
- Case number
- DEN91IA026
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1990-12-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a84fb14909ea9b7d041d8cba760c4dee0ad2e22177acd62fb6920de6829bfee7; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:58:02.350Z.