BFO88IA065 · Cessna T210R
Cessna T210R · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Delaware Coastal Airport (GED) to IAD · Washington, DC
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO88IA065
- 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 T210R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- 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
- N6286U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Delaware Coastal Airport (GED), Georgetown, DETo IAD · Washington, DC
- 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 · 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Washington, DC, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT EXPERIENCED SMOKE IN THE COCKPIT WHICH HE STATED CAME FROM UNDERNEATH THE INSTRUMENT PANEL. ACCORDING TO THE PLT, THE TRIM TAB SWITCH BECAME INOPERATIVE, THE FLIGHT CONTROLS BECAME 'HEAVY' AND THE WX RADAR CIRCUIT BREAKER POPPED EVEN THOUGH THE RADAR WAS OFF. THE PLT STATED THE SMOKE EVENTUALLY STOPPED AND HE CONTINUED TO THE DESTINATION AND LANDED WITHOUT INCIDENT. EXAMINATION OF THE ACFT REVEALED THAT INSIDE THE RIGHT WING, NEAR THE ROOT SECTION, THE WIRES FOR THE NAV LITE, STROBE LITE, AND FUEL QUANTITY TRANSMITTER SHORTED AND BURNED. THE WIRES WERE NEXT TO A FUEL VENTLINE THAT HAD BEEN CHANGED. REVIEW OF MAINTENANCE RECORDS DISCLOSED THAT ABOUT 3 YRS AGO A RADAR POD AND RADOME WERE INSTALLED WHICH INVOLVED ROUTING OF WIRES THROUGH THE AREA WHERE THE SHORTED WIRES WERE LOCATED.
Probable cause
IMPROPER MAINTENANCE RESULTING IN THE ROUTING OF WIRE WHICH CAUSED AN ELECTRICAL SHORT AND INFLIGHT SMOKE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO88IA065
- Event ID
- 20001213X26133
- Case number
- BFO88IA065
- 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: c098828ea1cbd35a9f4ae6566f0d73c663e098842935ba9fcf4e361bd67c9654; retrieved 2026-09-23T09:47:47.749Z.