ENG13RA018 · Boeing
Boeing · Incident
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's date. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG13RA018
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Not recorded
Boeing
- 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
- 9M-MPM
- Operator
- Unknown
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Jeddah, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
On March 23, 2013 at 1806 UTC, a Boeing B747-4H6 airplane, 9M-MPM, experienced an explosion and fire while starting the No. 4 engine at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (JED). The GACA reported that, after pushback and during the No. 4 engine start, a loud explosion was heard in conjunction with a huge flame. Fire bottles were discharged. The flight was a scheduled passenger flight from JED to Kualampur, Malaysia. Postevent airplane inspection found moderate thermal damage to the right wing outboard flap trailing edge and the jackscrew fairing. There were 317 persons aboard; no injuries were reported.
The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is investigating this incident. As the State of Manufacture of the airplane and engines, the NTSB has designated a U.S. Accredited Representative under the provisions of Annex 13 to the Convention on Civil Aviation and offered assistance to the GACA in their investigation.
All inquiries concerning this accident should be directed to the GACA of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at:
Aviation Safety Department Presidency of Civil Aviation P.O. Box 887 Jeddah 21165 Saudi Arabia
Tel.: (966) 2 640-5000, 685-5509 Fax: (966) 2 685-5507 AFTN: OEJDYAYX Telex: 601093 CIVAIR SJ Cable: CIVILAIR JEDDAH
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG13RA018
- Event ID
- 20130325X33019
- Case number
- ENG13RA018
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- 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: fc6277d432ede67cc80f67dcf9e992d55bd1b6ac7ce3d160fa83867a964d14bc; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:09:30.469Z.