Mesa Airlines Canadair CL-600-2B19 incident
Canadair CL-600-2B19 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure while taxiing
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04IA063
- 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
Canadair CL-600-2B19
- Aircraft type
- Canadair CL-600
- 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
- N17231
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, CO
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Overtemperature
- Air cond/heating/pressurization, safety valve › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain said that while taxiing to the gate after landing, the flight attendant reported that there was smoke in the cabin. The captain said he called the flight attendant back to get more details. The flight attendant told him the cabin was full of smoke. The captain stopped the airplane, set the parking brake, and ordered the airplane evacuated. The passengers and crew evacuated the airplane. The flight attendant described the smoke as blue in color and smelling like burning oil. An examination of the airplane showed that a fan by-pass check valve in the right air conditioning pact failed causing the air conditioning pack to overheat.
Probable cause
The failed air conditioning fan by-pass check valve and the subsequent overtemperature of the air conditioning pack.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04IA063
- Event ID
- 20040419X00477
- Case number
- DEN04IA063
- 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: 6f1cdb2cb9737b602e0dc24a14284572bc939471b899ede0c298133cb7a57f48; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:27:01.361Z.