Flight Options Raytheon Corporate Jets Beechjet 400A incident
Raytheon Corporate Jets Beechjet 400A · Incident: loss of engine power en route
From Halliburton Field (KDUC) to Southwest Florida International Airport (KRSW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG04IA021
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Raytheon Corporate Jets Beechjet 400A
- Aircraft type
- Raytheon Corporate Jets BEECHJET 400
- 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
- N455CW
- Operator
- Flight Options
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Halliburton Field (KDUC), Duncan, OKTo Southwest Florida International Airport (KRSW), Fort Myers, FL
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- 2 engines › Ice ingestion
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Raytheon Beechjet 400A was descending through flight level 390 when both of the engines flamed out and lost all power while operating in instrument meteorological conditions with convective storms in the area. The pilots, after several attempts, were able to get one engine restarted as the airplane was descending through 10,000 feet and diverted to a nearby airport. Testing of the engines immediately after the incident revealed that they were operating correctly. Testing of the fuel revealed that it conformed to the specifications for Jet A, but the fuel system icing inhibitor (FSII) was significantly below the required concentration. The investigation of two subsequent dual-engine flame out incidents revealed the FSII was not a factor. Convective weather can lift significant amounts of water into the upper atmosphere that then form ice crystals. Research indicates that the ice crystals can partially melt passing through the JT15D-5 engine fan that can then accrete to an internal compressor stator. When any accreted ice was shed from the stator vanes, it would pass through the high pressure compressor and could be picked up by the pressure sense line to the fuel control. Flight tests confirmed that sense line could go below freezing at low power settings at high altitude. Other tests showed that if the sense line was blocked and the power levers were retarded, the electronic engine control would reduce the fuel flow to reduce the power, but the sense pressure within the fuel control would be maintained. But when the blockage was cleared, the sudden reduction in the sense pressure in the fuel control would result in a reduction of the fuel flow at a rate that was much faster than a normal rapid power reduction and could result in the engine flaming out.
Probable cause
High-altitude ice crystals that had accreted on the compressor vanes and were ingested into the high pressure compressor when the pilots retarded the power levers causing compressor surges and flameouts of both engines. Contributing factors were the lack of training on the hazards of high-altitude ice crystals to gas turbine engines and guidance to the pilots to activate the engine anti-ice system in conditions where high-altitude ice crystals may exist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG04IA021
- Event ID
- 20040804X01143
- Case number
- ENG04IA021
- 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, 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: 606de251bc0140fb47837c85ec8fe47bd36c146493e08ebab756f84f482f0ceb; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:22:31.158Z.