FTW01LA102 · CAP 232
CAP 232 · Accident: fire while taxiing
From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41) to DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA102
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
CAP 232
- Aircraft type
- Cap 232
- 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
- N232DG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Porte Municipal Airport (T41), Laporte, TXTo DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GA
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Landing gear, normal brake system › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot boarded the experimental acrobatic aircraft after completion of an annual inspection, started the engine, and began to taxi from the ramp. About half-way down the taxiway, she noticed that she was using "a lot" of power to taxi downwind. During the taxi, the "brakes seemed to be okay" as they assisted directional control "normally" during turns. The pilot then stopped and turned into the wind to see if the parking brake was engaged. The brake handle was not "out" (on) so she pulled it out and tapped the brakes several times to release it. After calling on UNICOM frequency for assistance, she started to taxi back to the hangar. Just prior to reaching the ramp, the right brake failed. The aircraft turned left and the pilot stopped the aircraft. As airport personnel approached the aircraft, the pilot shut down the engine and saw smoke coming from the right side of the aircraft. She exited the aircraft and attempted to use a fire extinguisher on the wheel that was in flames. The fire did not extinguish, so both she and the airport personnel backed away as the aircraft was consumed by the fire. The fire damage was too extensive to discern specific anomalies with the normal and parking brake systems.
Probable cause
Failure of the brake system during taxi. A contributing factor was the pilot's decision to continue taxiing after discovering the brakes were not functioning normally.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA102
- Event ID
- 20010504X00882
- Case number
- FTW01LA102
- 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: 10a2dec4f031f3f8fc07ad4cc96e86e2585bf5e0030c00ebc8520b674f182130; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:00:34.847Z.