ERA19LA137 · Pilatus PC12 45
Pilatus PC12 45 · Accident: aircraft structural failure en route
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to Morristown Regional Airport (KMOR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA137
- 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
Pilatus PC12 45
- Aircraft type
- Pilatus PC12
- 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
- N944BT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Morristown Regional Airport (KMOR), Morristown, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2002)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Aircraft structural 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 structures
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the climb to cruise altitude on a cross-country flight, the pilot heard a loud bang and the pilot's side windshield shattered and the cabin began depressurizing. The pilot returned to the departure airport and landed uneventfully, where he noticed that the seal was extruded in two places around the outer pane. The windshield was sent to the manufacturer for a detailed examination, which revealed that 80% of the fiberglass straps were missing, and they were likely removed by maintenance personnel. A combination of missing straps and heavy delamination caused the outboard ply to become detached from the edge attachment. Moisture ingress at the bottom aft edge caused delamination and arcing. There was no record in the airframe logbook of the straps’ removal.
Probable cause
Improper maintenance of the windshield, which resulted in delamination and in-flight depressurization.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA137
- Event ID
- 20190325X84601
- Case number
- ERA19LA137
- 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, 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: be30dfc990349a043b6351ed346936ba054bddf1e8d5672bdbec873b15265f66; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:41:16.067Z.