CEN13LA408 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while taxiing
From Garner Field (KUVA) to George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA408
- 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
- N56FT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garner Field (KUVA), Uvalde, TXTo George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), Houston, TX
- 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 · from 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- 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
Following a full-stop landing, the pilot taxied the airplane from the runway toward a fixed-base operator (FBO) and then reported to the FBO that the airplane's brakes were hot before getting to his parking spot. Several FBO personnel reported to the control tower operator that the airplane appeared to be on fire. The pilot exited the airplane, and the fire subsequently consumed portions of the fuselage and cockpit.
Data extracted from the airplane revealed that the airplane taxied about 3.7 miles with the engine operating between 1,200 and 1,600 rpm. The airplane's pilot operating handbook warns that, if the 1,000 rpm taxi power limit and proper braking techniques are not used, the brake system may overheat, which could result in a brake fire. It is likely that the pilot's operation of the engine at a higher-than-recommended rpm level during a long taxi resulted in the brake system overheating and a subsequent fire.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to use the proper taxi procedure, which resulted in a brake system fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA408
- Event ID
- 20130711X73536
- Case number
- CEN13LA408
- 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: a675b3c9783690f6c80666290bf59c0198688225a8a4ec33e32c4c7486bf8505; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:11:40.770Z.