Jazz Aviation LP De Havilland DHC8 301 incident
De Havilland DHC8 301 · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Montreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (CYUL) to Bradley International Airport (BDL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG20IA006
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
De Havilland DHC8 301
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC8
- 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
- C-GNON
- Operator
- Jazz Aviation LP
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montreal / Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (CYUL), MontrealTo Bradley International Airport (BDL), Windsor Locks, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1989)
- 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 129: Foreign
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on descent to the destination airport, an in-flight fire occurred at the right windshield terminal block. The flight crew put on oxygen masks and smoke goggles, extinguished the fire, and landed without incident.
The fire damage was concentrated in an area between the upper edge of the terminal block and the lower edge of the windshield gasket where the L2 power wire was routed. The L2 power wire was melted through in this area but remained intact on either side, indicating an arcing failure of the L2 power wire. The damage and melting precluded determination of whether there was any pre-existing damage to the L2 power wire before the incident.
Examination of the windshield revealed that it had been installed on the airplane about 5 years before the incident, which was less than the 8.2-year average life reported by the windshield manufacturer. The windshield exhibited minor evidence of moisture ingression into the laminate around the edges and minor erosion of the exterior hump seal that did not contribute to the event. Review of the maintenance records showed that the operator was in compliance with all of the company and airplane manufacturer’s recommended inspections. The operator had performed the mandated inspections required by Airworthiness Directive (AD) but the application of Humiseal to the power terminals had not been completed, therefore, the operator was not in compliance with the AD. The missing Humiseal did not contribute to the event. The most recent inspection, which showed no discrepancies, occurred about 6 weeks prior to the incident.
Probable cause
The arcing failure of the windshield heat L2 power wire on the right windshield due to unknown reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG20IA006
- Event ID
- 20191210X12113
- Case number
- ENG20IA006
- 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, cause areas. 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: 2355509939da8330c8b886ee3868aba4f0639602bd1f07c8ed04fc6cb9967151; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:44:52.355Z.