Regional Express Holdings Saab 340 B incident
Saab 340 B · Incident
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG10WA018
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Not recorded
Saab 340 B
- Aircraft type
- Saab 340
- 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
- VH-SBA
- Operator
- Regional Express Holdings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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 129: Foreign
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On 4 October 2009, at 1257 EST, a SAAB 340B aircraft, registered VH-SBA, experienced a failure of the left engine during initial climb out from Wagga Wagga Aerodrome, NSW, Australia on a regular scheduled flight to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The flight crew reported that they noticed abnormally high indications of the left engine inter-turbine temperature and they then conducted the non-normal checklist items, shut down the left engine, and returned to the aerodrome without further incident. Subsequent inspection of the left engine indicated internal damage, specifically to the 1st stage compressor blisk airfoil section (blade). Of the 34 passengers, and 3 crewmembers on board, there were no reported injuries.
The aircraft, serial number 340B-311, was built in Sweden in 1992 and was a twin-engine turboprop fixed wing regional airliner with a tricycle-type landing gear. The engine was a General Electric Company, model CT7-9B, serial number 785210.
The subsequent engine disassembly, examination and inspection was completed on behalf of the ATSB under the supervision of a representative of the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB). The observations included: -all compressor blades were mechanically damaged -the 1st stage compressor blisk had 4 blades broken off at approximately mid span, while the others had tip damage and diameter reduction apparently from impact and trapping of debris, much like those further downstream -the four failed 1st stage blades had fracture faces which look similar to each other
Further metallurgy examination of the failed blades from the 1st stage blisk was performed in the UK. That examination confirmed that the four failed blades on the 1st stage blisk of the compressor showed a fatigue mechanism related to the failure.
The investigation is being conducted by the Australian Transportation Safety Board. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) P.O. Box 967, Civic Square Canberra A.C.T. 2608 Australia
Tel.: (61) 2 6257-4150 (24/7 Notifications) (61) 2 6274-6464 (International liaison) E-mail: atsbasir@atsb.gov.au (Notifications) atsbinfo@atsb.gov.au (International liaison) Fax: (61) 2 6274-6434 (Notifications) (61) 2 6274-6474 (International liaison) Website: http://www.atsb.gov.au
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information obtained for, or released by, the Government of Australia.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG10WA018
- Event ID
- 20100225X04005
- Case number
- ENG10WA018
- 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: damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 80b16d129a80d762cf26178f58869736fcbae25973180a1003ae29f5e247c15f; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:42:17.826Z.