SEA91IA003 · Cessna 551
Cessna 551 · Incident: fire en route
From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI) to San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA91IA003
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Cessna 551
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 551
- 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
- N226N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King County International Airport - Boeing Field (BFI), Seattle, WATo San Francisco International Airport (SFO), 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Anti-ice/deice system, wing › Burned
- Anti-ice/deice system, wing › Chafed
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING THE CLIMB TO CRUISE, THE RIGHT ENGINE ICE FAIL LIGHT ILLUMINATED. THE PILOT REDUCED POWER AND SHUT THE ENGINE DOWN. THE LIGHT REMAINED ILLUMINATED AND THE FIRE EXTINGUISHERS WERE DEPLOYED. THE LIGHT WENT OUT AND THE PILOT RETURNED TO THE AIRPORT. AFTER LANDING, AN EXAM REVEALED THE ELECTRICAL WIRE BUNDLES (THAT RAN ALONG THE TOP OF THE RIGHT WING NEAR THE ROOT) HAD CAUGHT ON FIRE AND BURNED THE LEADING EDGE ANTI-ICE, FIRE DETECTION AND ANTI SKID WIRES. IN CERTAIN AREAS, THE WIRES HAD DROOPED BELOW THE LINE OF SCREWS THAT SECURED THE OUTER PANEL AND WERE RUBBING ON THE PANEL. WHEN THIS AREA WAS LAST INSPECTED FOR WIRE DAMAGE, CHAFING, PROPER CLEARANCE AND SUPPORT, THE INSPECTION PANEL WAS NOT REMOVED ENTIRELY. THE MECHANIC THAT PERFORMED THE INSPECTION HAD VIEWED THE WIRE BUNDLE ASSEMBLY ONLY BY LOOKING DOWN AT THE TOP OF THE WIRES.
Probable cause
INADEQUATE INSPECTION OF THE ELECTRICAL WIRE BUNDLE ASSEMBLY BY MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL, AND CHAFING/BURNING OF THE WIRE BUNDLE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA91IA003
- Event ID
- 20001212X24541
- Case number
- SEA91IA003
- 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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2b1b1b59d53d7a0bf2fcb668067f20186e2553955ce799c186a647d1b98c7dcd; retrieved 2026-09-23T05:15:28.289Z.