Flight 2030 · McDonnell Douglas MD-88
McDonnell Douglas MD-88 · Incident: fire en route
From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) to LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99IA231
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-88
- 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
- N947DL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)To LaGuardia Airport (LGA), NEW YORK, NY
- 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
- Fire
- 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
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Arcing
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Deteriorated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On departure climb, the flight attendants smelled something burning. Then a passenger noticed a 'glow' in the right side air vent near his feet and reported that the cabin floor was warm. Halon was sprayed into the vent, and the glow disappeared. The pilot declared an emergency and returned to the departure airport. The airplane was stopped on the runway and based upon reports from emergency personnel, an emergency evacuation was performed. Thermal damage and sooting was found on the right side underside floor structure, a nearby fiberglass bin wall panel, and a potable water bottle. A 5-foot by 5-foot area of insulation, which consisted of fiberglass, covered on both sides with a metallized mylar, was burned. The right side, alternate static port heater lay under the insulation. The insulation on one of the wires leading to the heater was found to be deteriorated and melted where it was bent around the thermostat case. Evidence of metal transfer was found between the solid-core wire and the adjacent heater case. Soot was found on the insulation covering the wire and adjacent heater case. The heater was manufactured with the wire bend.
Probable cause
Deteriorated wire insulation and shorting at a short radius bend to the electrical wiring in the right side alternate static port heater, which resulted in electrical arcing and a fire sustained by overlaying thermal acoustic insulation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99IA231
- Event ID
- 20001212X19854
- Case number
- NYC99IA231
- 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 1999-09-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 89557ae337e6f18c4d153c7220e58fce97995f2e0973a7e563b64fb4ba890c6c; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:52:54.658Z.