The flow distribution characteristics in a complex duct system have been investigated in this paper by three means, namely experimental measurement, numerical simulation and the Extended T-method analysis. While the exit flow rates predicted by the three-dimensional CFD calculation and those given by the experiment show a close agreement, the results from the one-dimensional Extended T-method are found to differ from the experiment by -22.2% to 26.3% for the various exits. These discrepancies may be attributed to the underlying limitation concerning the fitting loss coefficients, which assume that the flow in front of the fittings is fully developed. It is proposed that, in order to analyse the three-dimensional flow distributions in a complex duct system by one-dimensional analysis such as the Extended T-method, further Improvements to the fitting loss coefficients should be made.