JetBlue Airways Flight 1781
Embraer ERJ 190-100 IGW · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) during landing
From an unrecorded airport to Lynden Pindling International Airport (MYNN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG09IA017
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Not recorded
Embraer ERJ 190-100 IGW
- Aircraft type
- Embraer ERJ-190
- 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
- N258JB
- Operator
- JetBlue Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lynden Pindling International Airport (MYNN), Nassau
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
A No. 1 engine under cowl fire occurred following landing. An emergency evacuation was performed, but the fire was quickly extinguished. The airplane's fuel system was pressurized and fuel sprayed from under the No. 1 engine high pressure turbine active clearance control (HPTACC) valve rod tube valve fitting B-nut. The coupling was properly safetied, but the B-nut was cocked on the fitting, and 3-4 fitting threads were exposed below the B-nut, consistent with the B-nut being cross-threaded on the fitting during installation. The HPTACC valve fuel rod tube coupling has both primary (metal-to-metal) and secondary (O-ring) seals between the fitting and the tube ferrule. Pre-disassembly X-ray photographs of the coupling provided B-nut stack measurements and showed a gap between the fitting and the ferrule at the primary seal location, indicating that this seal had not been engaged when the B-nut was tightened on the fitting. Disassembly inspection of the coupling found that the O-ring (secondary) seal was radially separated and extruded from its gland, consistent with having failed in service. A high-torque B-nut connection and thread damage to the B-nut and fitting threads were further evidence of an improperly installed (cross-threaded) B-nut. Maintenance and manufacturing records indicated that the coupling had not been disassembled since the engine was assembled at manufacture. An extrusion calculation found that the damage to the O-ring seal was consistent with the engine total time since new. Based on this evidence, it is likely that the coupling was cross-threaded during manufacturing final assembly, and there was no engagement of the metal-to-metal seal. As a result, the O-ring acted as the primary seal, until it failed in service, resulting in the leak.
Probable cause
failure of the engine high pressure turbine active clearance control valve fuel rod supply tube coupling seal due to a cross-threaded B-nut as installed during original manufacture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG09IA017
- Event ID
- 20090910X53412
- Case number
- ENG09IA017
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: e6bef2ba8dbea627a797f6e3a1637ee876b8924e2fee8faf5a38c0112550ef6b; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:57:30.642Z.