Alaska Airlines Flight 497
Boeing 737-700 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA) to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02IA002
- 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
- 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
Boeing 737-700
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N615AS
- Operator
- Alaska Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CATo Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA), Seattle, WA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Flt control syst, stabilator trim › Seized
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight crew experienced a jammed horizontal stabilizer trim actuator during the takeoff initial climb. The pilot reported that after takeoff, during climb out, the "STAB OUT OF TRIM" annunciator light illuminated. The crew disengaged the autopilot and found the electric trim control inoperative at both the pilot and co-pilot positions, and the manual trim control was jammed and immovable. The crew leveled the airplane at 13,000 feet and accomplished the "Stabilizer Out of Trim" and "Jammed Stabilizer" checklists to no avail. The crew declared an emergency with air traffic control, and made an otherwise uneventful landing at Los Angeles. According to the pilot, the trim manual control was jammed and immobile. Post flight examination revealed the horizontal stabilizer trim actuator motor was seized. The actuator motor was subsequently replaced with a serviceable unit, and the aircraft was ferried to Seattle for inspection. No other faults were found in the pitch trim system and the airplane was returned to service. Further examination of the actuator motor revealed that the motor was mechanically seized. According to a representative of Boeing Aircraft Company, with the motor seized, in order to manually trim the stabilizer, it would have been necessary for the flight crew to exert sufficient force on the trim wheel to cause the motor clutch to slip in addition to the force necessary to overcome normal system friction.
Probable cause
The failure of the stabilizer electric trim motor as a result of internal mechanical seizure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02IA002
- Event ID
- 20011015X02092
- Case number
- LAX02IA002
- 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, coordinates, 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: ecb2b1f7587851ad9911c27aff25d65e32414da1225d873ec9d175b96b3e6082; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:09:05.360Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N615AS; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ASAA.