Jet Solutions Learjet 60 incident
Learjet 60 · Incident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA) to Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG07IA018
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Learjet 60
- 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
- N244FX
- Operator
- Jet Solutions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, CATo Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, MA
- 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 · 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical 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, blade › Failure
- Compressor assembly, blade › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced an in-flight fan blade separation in the left engine, a Pratt & Whitney Canada (PWC) PW305A turbofan, while in cruise flight at FL 410 near Palm Springs (PSP), California. The airplane diverted to PSP for an overweight, single-engine landing without further incident. The examination of the engine revealed that one fan blade was fractured transversely across the airfoil adjacent to the blade root platform. Metallurgical examination of the fan blade revealed that the blade had separated from a fatigue fracture. A fluorescent penetrant examination of the fan blades from both engines revealed numerous fan blades had crack indications. Some of the blades were broken open to reveal fatigue cracks similar to that noted on the fractured blade. A dimensional inspection of the cracked fan blades revealed that they were under the minimum thickness in a highly stressed area of the airfoil. The investigation determined that the fan blades were too thin due to an improper forging die setup when the blades were manufactured. At the time the fan blades were made, PWC did not require a dimensional inspection of the fan blade airfoils.
Probable cause
The fatigue fracture of the fan blade due to the blade vendor's improper setup of the forging dies, which resulted in fan blades with airfoils that were below the minimum thickness in the highest stressed area of the airfoil and resulted in operating stresses that exceeded the material's capability. Contributing to the incident was the engine manufacturer's lack of a dimensional inspection of the fan blade's airfoil.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG07IA018
- Event ID
- 20081219X65330
- Case number
- ENG07IA018
- 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. 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: b6d588e23d412c8065bd548f150e48d71e2b58a4da71a6449b726c7ab949cb7f; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:45:54.107Z.