Airtran Airways Flight 956
Douglas DC-9 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From an unrecorded airport to AKRON/CANTON, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA01MA005
- 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
- Accident
- 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
- Not recorded
Douglas DC-9
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N826AT
- Operator
- AirTran Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo AKRON/CANTON, OH
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Arcing
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Atlanta, GA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the airplane experienced electrical problems, including numerous tripped circuit breakers. The flight crew requested a return to airport. During the landing rollout, the lead flight attendant and air traffic control personnel reported to the flight crew that smoke was coming from the left side of the airplane; subsequently, the flight crew initiated an emergency evacuation on one of the taxiways. Examination of the airplane revealed fire damage to the left, forward areas of the fuselage, cabin, and forward cargo compartment. The greatest amount of fire damage was found just aft of the electrical disconnect panel located at fuselage station 237. There was no evidence that the drip shield normally installed over the disconnect panel was present at the time of the accident. Bluish stains caused by lavatory rinse fluid were observed on surfaces near the disconnect panel on the accident airplane and in the same areas on another of AirTran's DC-9 airplanes. Examination of one of the connectors from the disconnect panel on the accident airplane revealed light-blue and turquoise-green deposits on its internal surfaces and evidence of shorting between the connector pins. It could not be determined when the drip shield over the disconnect panel was removed; however, this likely contributed to the lavatory fluid contamination of the connectors. Following the accident, AirTran revised its lavatory servicing procedures to emphasize the importance of completely draining the waste tank to avoid overflows. Boeing issued an alert service bulletin recommending that operators of DC-9 airplanes visually inspect the connectors at the FS 237 disconnect panel for evidence of lavatory rinse fluid contamination and that they install a drip shield over the disconnect panel. Boeing also issued a service letter to operators to stress the importance of properly sealing floor panels and adhering to lavatory servicing procedures specified in its DC-9 Maintenance Manual. The Safety Board is aware of two incidents involving the military equivalent of the DC-9 that involved circumstances similar to the accident involving N826AT. Drip shields were installed above the FS 237 disconnect panels on both airplanes.
Probable cause
the leakage of lavatory fluid from the airplane's forward lavatory onto electrical connectors, which caused shorting that led to a fire. Contributing to the accident were the inadequate servicing of the lavatory and the failure of maintenance to ensure reinstallation of the shield over the fuselage station 237 disconnect panel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA01MA005
- Event ID
- 20010108X00056
- Case number
- DCA01MA005
- 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: 76199efdad573dd69f32c24d932659daf653ed2a3866750060594969e337f03c; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:19:31.613Z.