FlightFollowerMAYDAY Serious Flight Control Problem After Takeoff | SkyWest Declares Emergency
On 8 December 2025, a SkyWest Airlines Canadair CRJ-200, N963SW, operating as United Express flight SKW5344 (UA5344), had just departed Chicago O'Hare when the crew ran into a serious problem with the aircraft's pitch trim.
Accident Facts
- Incident date
- 8 Dec 2025
- Registration
- N963SW
- Aircraft
- Canadair CRJ-200 (SkyWest Airlines, operating as United Express)
- Airports
- ORD (Chicago O'Hare)
- Injuries
- None reported; aircraft landed safely
- Investigation status
- No public NTSB/FAA final report identified;
- Category
- Emergency, Control problem
- Reconstruction
- 5:26
The horizontal stabilizer — which trims the aircraft's nose up or down to hold level flight — began moving on its own, a condition known as a trim runaway. Left unchecked, it can steadily push an aircraft's nose in a direction the pilots don't want, forcing them to fight the controls to hold their intended flight path. The crew declared a mayday and told air traffic control they needed to return to O'Hare immediately.
Controllers cleared the flight back in ahead of other traffic, and the crew worked the malfunction using their emergency procedures for runaway stabilizer trim — checklists built for exactly this situation, which typically call for isolating the trim system and flying the aircraft manually. The CRJ landed safely back at O'Hare.