Mesa Airlines Bombardier, Inc. CL-600-2B19 incident
Bombardier, Inc. CL-600-2B19 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Denver International Airport (KDEN) to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07IA055
- 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
Bombardier, Inc. CL-600-2B19
- 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
- N17337
- Operator
- Mesa Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, COTo Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX), Phoenix, AZ
- 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- Compressor assembly, forward fan › Fatigue
- Compressor assembly, forward fan › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While climbing through FL 240, the No. 1 engine experienced a fan disk separation, which resulted in the separation of the inlet, fan rotor assembly, the fan containment case, and portions of the thrust reverser. The airplane reversed course and landed without further incident. Postincident examination revealed minor damage to the aft portion of the fuselage and empennage. An examination of the remaining airplane systems revealed no anomalies. Portions of the fan disk were recovered and examination of the fan disk revealed fatigue striations emanating from the aft bore corner of the fan disk. The striations came from an area that exhibited characteristics consistent with arc-out damage, which was the result of improper assembly and marking procedures during the electrochemical etching process. This damage was not detected during the manufacturer's quality assurance process used by the manufacturer. Further, the operator did not detect this damage while conducting the inspections prescribed through required airworthiness directives because the inspection procedures required were not detailed enough to detect the arc-out damage and the maintenance personnel did not receive appropriate training. Following the incident, the manufacturer issued alert service bulletins and the FAA issued an airworthiness directive to resolve these issues.
Probable cause
A fatigue fracture, which resulted in the separation of the No.1 engine fan disk. Contributing factors in the accident were the operators' maintenance personnel lack of training to be able to detect arc-out damage on the fan disk, and the fan disk manufacturer's inadequate electro-chemical etch match marking process of the fan disk to forward fan shaft that allowed for the initiation of a fatigue point that was undetected at the time of original manufacture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07IA055
- Event ID
- 20070131X00119
- Case number
- DEN07IA055
- 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: ab0dce5a36c1abe23cf845a250a69907c6e407913b1584f756893cc41230d98d; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:47:33.085Z.