USA Jet Airlines Dassault/Sud FAN JET FALCON incident
Dassault/Sud FAN JET FALCON · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure on approach
From John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport (CYHM) to Shreveport Regional Airport (KSHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15IA085
- 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
Dassault/Sud FAN JET FALCON
- Aircraft type
- Dassault/sud FAN JET FALCON
- 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
- N827AA
- Operator
- USA Jet Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport (CYHM), HamiltonTo Shreveport Regional Airport (KSHV), Shreveport, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Flight control system 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
- None
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the operator, during the visual approach, the copilot needed to use "more aft pressure than normal" while descending the airplane from 2,000 to 20 ft above ground level (agl). When the airplane was below 20 ft agl and in the landing flare, the yoke hit the aft stop. The flight crew subsequently landed the airplane without incident. After landing, the flight crew conducted a postflight examination, which revealed that the elevator trim was in the full nose-down position and that it could not be returned to the takeoff or neutral position. The flight crew pulled the circuit breaker and used the emergency trim to move the elevator trim to the takeoff position. After the trim circuit breaker was reengaged, the elevator trim moved back to the full nose-down position. Examination of the trim system found that a wire had shorted between two terminal junctions, which resulted in power at one of the terminal junctions regardless of the position of the trim switch on the captain's control. Further examination also found that the connector at another terminal junction had shorted. The wires and connectors were removed and replaced, and the trim anomaly was resolved.
Probable cause
A short in the trim system’s wires and connector, which resulted in the elevator trim being in a full nose-down position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15IA085
- Event ID
- 20141222X75002
- Case number
- CEN15IA085
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-12-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d8de377c447cc04698fc61e4b370487638244e5f65abf6ad9d75455d2ad7b49c; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:59:33.615Z.