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Atlas / NTSB / ENG20LA043

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ENG20LA043

2020-07-24 Charlotte, North Carolina, United States Airport · CLT None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Registry · N561NN

FAA Aircraft Registry record.

Make / Model

BOMBARDIER INC CL-600-2D24

Year of manufacture

2014 · 6 years old at event

Engine

GE CF34-8C5

Seats / Engines

95 seats · 2 engines

Last airworthiness date

20141217

ADS-B equipped

Yes — Mode-S A72BDA

Registrant of record

AMERICAN AIRLINES INC

Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The windshield failed due to arcing from an inadequate solder connection at the anti-ice power terminal block.

Factual narrative

The damaged left side windshield (P/N NP139321-17 S/N 18338H6714) from N561NN was removed from the airplane and shipped to PPG Aerospace in Huntsville, Alabama. PPG examined the window in November 2020. The windshield serial number indicated that the windshield was a new unit and was completed in December of 2018. The subject windshield was installed on N561NN and had accumulated 3238.53 flight hours and 2870 flight cycles. PPG Aerospace completed manufacture of the window in December 2018. A teardown of the unit identified the failure origin underneath the power terminal block at the power braid A location. Removal of the terminal block and sealant revealed an arcing hot spot where the failure occurred at power braid wire position A. There was no visible solder at the connection point of braid wire A. The braid wire solder connection point at position B was still intact. The arcing/overheating of the braid wire caused the fire event in the cockpit. Removal of the terminal block and sealant revealed an arcing hot spot where the failure occurred at power braid wire position A. There was no visible solder at the connection point of braid wire A, which led to the arcing of the power braid wire and the fire event in the cockpit. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Aircraft-Aircraft systems-Ice/rain protection system-Ice/rain prot sys wiring-Failure

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2020_ENG20LA043.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 (stall). 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 ↗