CEN12LA220 · Cirrus Design Corporation SR22T
PlaneSmart! Aviation Cirrus Design Corporation SR22T · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure while taxiing
From Addison Airport (ADS) to Addison Airport (ADS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA220
- 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 Corporation SR22T
- 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
- N229TX
- Operator
- PlaneSmart! Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addison Airport (ADS), Addison, TXTo Addison Airport (ADS), Addison, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2011)
- 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 · to runway
- Defining eventThe 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
- Electrical system malfunction/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane experienced an electrical fire while taxiing to the departure runway. A postaccident examination revealed that a grounded shield wire was improperly attached to the alternator's auxiliary power terminal instead of the alternator's case-ground connection during recent maintenance. The mechanic who had recently removed the alternator stated that he did not identify the location of the wire harness leads during removal and that the manufacturer's documentation did not depict where the power shield wire should be attached on the alternator, so he decided to attach the shield wire to the auxiliary power terminal, which was not correct.
The manufacturer's wiring manual did not depict the optional electrical system wiring configuration, which included the incorporation of the No. 1 alternator power shield wire. As a result of the accident, the airplane manufacturer updated the wiring manual to explicitly account for the shield wires and the unused auxiliary power terminal. Caution messages were added to the maintenance manuals warning mechanics that the airplane might be equipped with cable shielding and, if so, where to connect the shielding on the alternator.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s improper maintenance, which resulted in the incorrect wiring of the No. 1 alternator and a subsequent electrical system fire during taxi. Contributing to the accident was the airplane manufacturer's inadequate maintenance documentation that did not depict updated electrical system wiring options.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA220
- Event ID
- 20120403X00927
- Case number
- CEN12LA220
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: bd94810abf1af33ffa8840c2a7efd57ebf1eb4ed1a69e8db7b55e58d92462681; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:38:52.894Z.