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ENG14IA011 · Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A A

13 Mar 2014 · Rochester, NY, United States

Guardian Pharmacy Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A A · Incident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during initial climb

From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC) to an unrecorded destination

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Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.

Event

NTSB case
ENG14IA011
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
General aviation
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

Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A A

Aircraft type
Raytheon 400
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
N193BJ
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC), Rochester, NYTo not recorded
Aircraft age
About 16 years (built 1998)
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 91: General Aviation
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
Initial climb
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
Powerplant system/component malfunction/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 Possible conflict

Cause areas

  • Aircraft › Aircraft power plant

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The No. 2 engine sustained a herring gull bird strike during takeoff climb from Rochester International Airport- Rochester, NY. The impact from the birdstrike resulted in contact between the fan and inlet case that separated eleven (11) of the nineteen (19) fan blades and subsequently led to the failure of the No. 1 bearing housing, and a midshaft fracture of the low pressure turbine shaft. Materials analysis on recovered fan blade fragments determined that all separated blades failed due to overload and no evidence of fatigue was identified. A series of modal tests including: tap hammer, high energy shaker, and computer model simulation were conducted at the system and component level. The tests identified a four nodal diameter coincidence at about 72% N1 speed. When sufficient energy is imparted to the engine fan during a foreign object ingestion event like a birdstrike, it may result in a rub induced excitation and subsequent fan blade separation and catastrophic engine failure.

Probable cause

The probable cause of the uncontained No. 2 engine failure on the Raytheon Beechjet 400A was a herring gull birdstrike that resulted in fan blade contact with the inlet case and rub induced excitation of a previously unidentified natural frequency (resonance) within the engine operating range.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ENG14IA011
Event ID
20140506X00214
Case number
ENG14IA011
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, 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: f0e36bf5c3528e64d1320e8294f5efa2b5e42978e77a04983181bc916fabf53a; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:35:07.460Z.