Mesa Airlines Bombardier CL-600-2C10 accident
Bombardier CL-600-2C10 · Accident
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) to IAD · Washington, DC
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05LA047
- 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
Bombardier CL-600-2C10
- Aircraft type
- Bombardier 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
- N506MJ
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TXTo IAD · Washington, DC
- 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
- Other
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Air cond/heating/pressurization, freon system › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff roll, both flight attendants observed a haze in the cabin. As the airplane rotated and began to climb, the haze thickened. At approximately 500 feet above ground level (agl), the smoke detector in the rear lavatory sounded, the "smoke toilet" message was displayed in the cockpit, and a strong odor of smoke was present. The captain declared an emergency and returned to the airport. According to a statement provided by the flight attendants, after a safe and uneventful landing, the captain ordered an emergency evacuation utilizing the airplane's four exits. A passenger exited the airplane through a window exit and fractured a bone in her right foot. Company maintenance personnel examined the airplane and "found that an air conditioning pack that had failed," which would have resulted in a haze in the cabin.
Probable cause
The failure of an air conditioning pack, which resulted in a haze filling the cabin. A contributing factor was the failure of the passenger to follow evacuation instructions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05LA047
- Event ID
- 20050104X00010
- Case number
- DFW05LA047
- 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, 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: f1227e698f55497b33264bb13b763e306acfded9573c49d2db644374921f7e72; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:09:37.948Z.