Empire Airlines Flight CFS8202
Fokker F27MK 600 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Ketchikan International Airport (KTN) to Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA076
- 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
Fokker F27MK 600
- Aircraft type
- Fokker F27
- 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
- N730FE
- Operator
- Empire Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ketchikan International Airport (KTN), Ketchikan, AKTo 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
- 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
- Partial 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Reduction gear assembly, accessory drive bearing › Failure
- Turboshaft engine, power output shaft › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After initiating their descent the crew heard a "thunk" sound from the left side of the aircraft, followed by the gearbox LOW OIL PRESSURE warning light illuminating. After consulting the Quick Reference Handbook, the left engine was shut down, the crew declared an emergency, and a single-engine landing was made at the destination airport without incident. Subsequent examination by maintenance personnel revealed that the #1 engine drive shaft had failed at the universal joint connection area on the gear side of the engine, resulting in substantial damage to the firewall. The left engine's accessory drive shaft assembly, including the forward and aft universal joints, were sent to the NTSB Materials Laboratory Division, Washington, D.C., for examination. The examination revealed that the accessory drive shaft failed due to deterioration of bearing number 1 in the aft fork of the joint. This failure led to frictional heating for some time and off-axis rotation that eventually allowed the spider journal to slip out of the bearing cup at bearing number 3, leading to the rapid separation of the joint. The cause for the number 1 bearing failure is unknown.
Probable cause
The failure of the accessory drive shaft due to deterioration of bearing number 1 in the aft fork of the universal joint for undetermined reasons during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA076
- Event ID
- 20030509X00638
- Case number
- SEA03LA076
- 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, coordinates. 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: 83a27b525cd443d8f3926549fdc978bd57c9664ecb21477f71401e8a135a8cf6; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:51:13.001Z.