Astral Aviation Beech 1900D incident
Beech 1900D · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Indianapolis International Airport (IND) to General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96IA170
- 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
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Beech 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N148SK
- Operator
- Astral Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Indianapolis International Airport (IND)To General Mitchell International Airport (MKE), Milwaukee, WI
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Binding(mechanical)
- Air cond/heating/pressurization › Failure
- Electrical system › Inadequate
- Electrical system › Overtemperature
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate design
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after taking off, the crew of the airplane noted smoke in the cabin, and they returned and landed at the departure airport. Investigation revealed that a bearing in the forward cabin ventilation blower motor had failed. There was evidence that after the bearing had failed, the wires and resistors to the ventilation motor had overheated. The wires were charred and sooted on the blower motor housing. The resistors (for low speed fan operation) showed signs of heat damage. Current limiters were provided to protect the electrical circuit. However, research revealed that the wiring and resistors were not adequately protected in the low speed fan mode.
Probable cause
failure of a forward cabin ventilation blower motor bearing, which resulted in binding of the blower motor; and inadequate design of the electrical system, which allowed overheating of the electrical circuit and smoke in the cabin of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96IA170
- Event ID
- 20001208X05710
- Case number
- CHI96IA170
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-05-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c2030f7f96a3a4e47ec4241ee07cdb3dd086048dc57add6bfcb272225aa28293; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:50:47.815Z.