Horizon Air Industries Flight 2325
de Havilland DHC-8-102 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA) to Portland International Airport (PDX)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01FA059
- 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
- Accident
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-8-102
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-8
- 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
- N822PH
- Operator
- Horizon Air Industries
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WATo Portland International Airport (PDX), Portland, OR
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, bearing › Failure
- Engine assembly, other › Disconnected
- Engine assembly, other › Melted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Horizon Air flight 2325, a de Havilland DHC-8-102, on a scheduled 14CFR121 flight sustained an engine fire in a Pratt & Whitney (P&W) PW120A engine while on approach to Portland International airport, Portland, Oregon. An engine examination and teardown determined that the #5 bearing assembly had failed. Additional examination ascertained that the P2.5/P3 switching valve to rear inlet case sealing air tube had become disconnected, and the NL probe port sealing tube had melted, allowing an oil fed fire outside of the engine casing and into the engine compartment. Investigation determined that the engine had not been placed on oil consumption and daily chip detector examination by company maintenance as required by the engine maintenance manual following a loss of oil event approximately 180 hours previous to the fire. Additionally, the mandatory implementation of P&W service bulletin 20914, which addressed the P2.5/P3 switching valve to rear inlet case sealing air tube and NL probe port sealing tube was not carried out by the company, nor was it required, as the FAA airworthiness directive making the service bulletin mandatory did not include the PW120A engine. The investigation also revealed that the company mandated implementation of P&W service bulletin 21446R3, was not carried out during an earlier hot section inspection and immediately preceding the earlier oil loss event.
Probable cause
The failure of the number 5 engine bearing assembly followed by the disconnection of the P2.5/P3 switching valve to rear inlet case sealing air tube and the melting of the NL probe port (sealing tube) which allowed an oil fed fire beyond the constraints of the engine casing and into the engine nacelle. A contributing factor was the company's failure to follow several maintenance procedures within the maintenance manual after a previous oil loss event. A second factor was the omission of the PW120A engine from the airworthiness directive issued by the FAA which mandated the completion of Pratt & Whitney service bulletin 20914. The lack of inclusion of the PW120A engine in the AD resulted in the company’s correct interpretation that the service bulletin was not mandatory.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01FA059
- Event ID
- 20010308X00571
- Case number
- SEA01FA059
- 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. 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: e9740dce2e1e84e974e619987840bbf28500584573599c43ce6274736f1278fb; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:16:07.365Z.