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Atlas / NTSB / CHI88IA159

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event CHI88IA159

1988-07-06 INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, United States None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

FAILURE TO ENSURE PROPER ALIGNMENT AND CLOSURE OF THE AUXILLARY POWER UNIT LOWER SHROUD WITH THE FIRE SEAL UPON COMPLETION OF A MAINTENANCE ACTION.

Factual narrative

SCHEDULED AIR CARRIER EXPERIENCED APU FIRE WARNING WHEN APU START WAS ATTEMPTED DURING APPROACH DESCENT. INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT EGT TEMPERATURE PROBE WIRING HARNESS WAS PINCHED BETWEEN FIRE SEAL AND LOWER APU SHROUD. FIRE SEAL COMPROMISE ALLOWED POOLED FUEL TO ENTER LOWER APU AREA AND CAUSE LOCALIZED FIRE ON DELAYED IGNITION. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1988_CHI88IA159.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (maintenance). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗