Britt Airways Swearingen SA226TC incident
Swearingen SA226TC · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) to Evansville, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- MKC85IA045
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Swearingen SA226TC
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- 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
- N322BA
- Operator
- Britt Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), St. Louis, MOTo Evansville, IN
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, overhaul, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AFTER DEPARTING ST LOUIS AND REACHING CRUISE FLT THE CREW EXPERIENCED A CONTINUAL TRIM PITCH-UP WHICH HAD TO BE RELIEVED BY A REDUCED AIRSPEED. NO AURAL INDICATION WAS NOTED BY THE CREW. THE RETURN TO THE AIRPORT WAS UNEVENTFUL. FOLLOW-UP INSPECTION OF THE TRIM SYSTEM REVEALED A OUT OF TOLERANCE TRIM ACTUATOR WITH 355 OPERATIONAL HOURS SINCE O-TIME OVERHAUL. NORMAL LIFE FOR A TRIM ACTUATOR IS ABT 2000 HOURS. THIS UNIT WAS CERTIFIED AS O-TIME BY AN FAA CERTIFIED SHOP. A TEARDOWN INSPECTION OF THE TRIM ACTUATOR UNIT REVEALED THAT THE UNIT WAS NOT OVERHAULED TO SPECIFICATIONS OF THE UNIT MANUFACTURER. THE TRIM ACTUATOR WAS INADEQUATE FOR OPERATION AS OVERHAULED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MKC85IA045
- Event ID
- 20001214X35586
- Case number
- MKC85IA045
- 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: d57ea3d06ea9c89a9ec60f879b221961d53d9d8043ffbdc809076a2740b5aeba; retrieved 2026-09-18T20:33:01.426Z.