LAX05LA109 · Cirrus Design Corp. SR22
Cirrus Design Corp. SR22 · Accident: fire during takeoff
From Half Moon Bay Airport (HAF) to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA109
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp. SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N517SW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Half Moon Bay Airport (HAF), Half Moon Bay, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Brakes(normal), excessive
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot taxied the airplane from the parking area to the end of the runway for takeoff, which was about 1.5 miles, with the right brake on to maintain alignment with the taxiway. He had turned onto the runway, when the passenger saw flames coming from the right main landing gear brake area. The airplane sustained structural damage to the right wing from the fire. The pilot said that for the past several months, the airplane had been "pulling left," and he had to drag the right brake in order to taxi straight. Two weeks prior to the accident, the pilot informed maintenance of the issue. Maintenance personnel found that the left brake cylinder and assembly had been leaking fluid. They repaired the left brake assembly, and returned the airplane to service. Three days prior to the accident, there was a report to maintenance that the left brake was pulling excessively. Section 4 of the airplane's operating manual, contained a caution note, which directed pilots to taxi with the minimum power needed for forward movement. It stated that excessive braking could result in overheated or damaged brakes, which could result in brake system malfunction or failure.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive braking during taxi that resulted in the right brake overheating and a fire. A factor in the accident was the pilot's continued operation with known deficiencies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA109
- Event ID
- 20050312X00305
- Case number
- LAX05LA109
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-03-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 809dfcd46749cfe5a02309630579b4b13808932e9d17a7767ee42c0c2537ff95; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:13:24.384Z.