Pinnacle Airlines Bombardier, Inc. CL-600-2B19 incident
Bombardier, Inc. CL-600-2B19 · Incident: fire en route
From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) to Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06IA054
- 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
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Bombardier, Inc. CL-600-2B19
- Aircraft type
- Bombardier CL-600
- 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
- N8783E
- Operator
- Pinnacle Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Asheville Regional Airport (AVL), Ashville, NCTo Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), Covington, KY
- 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
- Fire
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Window, flight compartment window/windshield › Arcing
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight crew, while climbing through 17,000 feet, the captain smelled smoke. A few seconds later flames and smoke started shooting out of the lower left windshield. The captain believed it was the windshield heat unit. The first officer turned off the windshield heat and the flames went out, but the smoke persisted. The captain declared an emergency with air traffic controllers and returned to the Asheville Regional Airport. Examination of the windshield found that the overheat damage was the result of an improperly installed fastener that resulted in arcing between the terminal block lug, the aircraft wiring eyelet and the fastener and lock washer that secures the two components together. The arcing progressed over time degrading the solder junction between the terminal block and the windshield heating system braid wire that resulted in heat damage to the sealant and the subsequent flame.
Probable cause
The improper installation of the pilot's windshield by company maintenance personnel, which resulted in flame and smoke in the cockpit, and subsequent emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06IA054
- Event ID
- 20060323X00337
- Case number
- ATL06IA054
- 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, coordinates. 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: b6dbad6aa3f2e023a9e5f44aead70af4de917eb83f3b6f3fba785e5e32912202; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:54:42.040Z.