United Airlines Flight 889
Boeing 777 200 · Incident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during takeoff
From Beijing Capital International Airport (ZBAA) to San Francisco International Airport (KSFO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG25LA038
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
Boeing 777 200
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 777
- 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
- N793UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beijing Capital International Airport (ZBAA), BeijingTo San Francisco International Airport (KSFO), San Francisco, CA
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On May 26, 2025, at approximately 0925 UTC, a Boeing 777-200, registration N793UA, operated as United Airlines flight 889, executed a rejected takeoff at Beijing Capital International Airport when the crew heard a loud bang and followed by a No. 2 (right) engine failure warning. The airplane came to an uneventful stop on the runway, passengers were deplaned, and the airplane was later defueled and towed clear of the runway.
The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 flight from Beijing Capital International Airport (ZBAA) to San Francisco International Airport (KSFO), San Francisco, California.
The airplane data recorders will be downloaded at the NTSB Headquarters in Washington, DC, and the No. 2 engine was removed further examination.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China declined to investigate and as such the NTSB is leading the investigation as the State of Registry/Manufacturer in accordance with ICAO Annex 13 guidelines. Additional parties to the investigation include the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Boeing, United Airlines, and Pratt & Whitney.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG25LA038
- Event ID
- 20250611200307
- Case number
- ENG25LA038
- 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 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: a466091c3ea3f0acbd09ea02b86d0c5782be8ff719187af104cfe81539a0e1e7; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:57:18.308Z.