Mesaba Airlines British Aerospace Avro 146-RJ85A incident
British Aerospace Avro 146-RJ85A · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM) to OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05IA156
- 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
British Aerospace Avro 146-RJ85A
- Aircraft type
- British Aerospace AVRO 146
- 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
- N530XJ
- Operator
- Mesaba Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (MEM), Memphis, TNTo OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC), Oklahoma City, OK
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Hydraulic system, line › Fatigue
- Hydraulic system, line › Ruptured
- Manufacturer › Material defect
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 landing rollout, a high-pressure hydraulic line ruptured and penetrated the interior wall of the cabin, and subsequently sprayed hydraulic fluid into the cabin and passengers. The passengers evacuated with minimal injuries. Examination of the airplane revealed that one of the three, 10-foot-long hydraulic lines that ran vertically along the circumference of the fuselage had failed at a shallow bend that was designed into the line when it was manufactured. A metallurgical examination of the line revealed that it failed due to a longitudinal defect that measured .0012-inches in depth on the inner diameter surface near a weld that occurred during the manufacturing process. This was the second known failure of this same-type hydraulic line. However, the first failure had a larger defect and the manufacturer's inspection specifications indicated that it should have been rejected during the testing process. According to the manufacturer, if a defect was measured below .002-inches in depth, then the line was considered acceptable provided that the defect could be removed and the line continued to meet wall thickness and ovality requirements.
Probable cause
Failure of a high pressure hydraulic line from fatigue as a result of a manufacturing defect.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05IA156
- Event ID
- 20050616X00793
- Case number
- DFW05IA156
- 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. 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: 522816592a8654e50ebde26b1b0820766b0ca645491069de9402dc2f4866264e; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:01:42.917Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N530XJ; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.