Airwest Airlines de Havilland DHC-7-103 incident
de Havilland DHC-7-103 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From West Houston Airport (IWS) to Dallas Love Field (DAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW85IA184
- 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
de Havilland DHC-7-103
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-7
- 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
- N210AW
- Operator
- Airwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Houston Airport (IWS), WEST HOUSTONTo Dallas Love Field (DAL), DALLAS LOVE FLD, TX
- 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 · 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
- Turbine assembly, shaft bearing › Failure, total
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of College Station, TX, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
FOLLOWING A TORQUE DROP AND RPM FLUCTUATION ON THE #2 ENGINE THE PILOTS OBSERVED FLAMES FROM THE TAILPIPE. THEY SHUT THE ENGINE DOWN AND EXTINQUISHED THE FIRE. A PRECAUTIONARY LANDING WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT INCIDENT. A TEAR DOWN REVEALED A FAILED #4 BEARING IN THE TURBINE SHAFT
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW85IA184
- Event ID
- 20001214X36178
- Case number
- FTW85IA184
- 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 1985-04-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4135b39e17d3cfb56cdd38a60a44426dd6b2ab5fcbcaa48b7d6c358051d3e819; retrieved 2026-09-18T20:28:14.835Z.