LAX05FA108 · Cessna 210L
Cessna 210L · Accident: fire during takeoff
From Oxnard Airport (OXR) to Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05FA108
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 210L
- 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
- N2044S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oxnard Airport (OXR), Oxnard, CATo Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, 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
- Fuel system, line › Arcing
- Fuel system, line › Perforated
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the pilot turned the airplane onto the active runway, he saw white flashes coming from the engine gauges in the instrument panel. He did not believe there was a problem, and continued the takeoff run. About 1,000 feet down the runway, smoke started to enter the cabin, and he stopped the airplane and evacuated the passengers. When he returned to the cabin area, he noted a fire concentrated in the engine gauge instrument cluster area of the panel. He put the fire out, but by the time the fire department arrived, the fire had restarted. The cabin area sustained structural damage during the fire. Investigation found that the wire bundles in the engine gauge area had missing insulation and beading. The engine instrument section was removed for inspection, and a pinhole was found on the steel fuel pressure line. A Safety Board materials specialist examined the fuel pressure line, and noted copper material and damage that was consistent with electrical arcing of a copper wire on another metal surface. The airframe manufacturer issued Service Bulletin SEB98-7 in 1998, which required an inspection of the fuel line between the firewall and fuel flow gauge for abrasion damage. No evidence was found that the service bulletin had been complied with. While the service bulletin was not mandatory, had it been addressed, the damage to the fuel line may have been found in a timely manner before the onset of the fire.
Probable cause
A pinhole leak in the fuel pressure line during the takeoff roll that was ignited by an electrical arc associated with wires adjacent to the fuel line. A contributing factor in the accident was the failure of maintenance personnel to comply with a manufacturer's service bulletin that addressed potential damage to the fuel line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05FA108
- Event ID
- 20050312X00306
- Case number
- LAX05FA108
- 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: f6006e7201a391ff01fca1b75bd54ec71e7277f788573a9a821efb27d67bedb6; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:13:27.763Z.