Airbag inflator rupture on the 2006 Honda Pilot
1 crash 1 injury 2 of the 22 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 2 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When airbag inflator rupture gets reported
There are 22 reports of airbag inflator rupture on the 2006 Honda Pilot, 2 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 80,000 miles. It is the 2nd most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 164,125 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a crash and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $0–$0 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 13 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2014, at a median of 10 miles, and latest on the 2007 at 300,000 miles.
By volume the 2011 carries the most reports, with 33; the 2006 has 22. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Takata inflators: after hitting a roadside object at a county road turning into a community, the steering wheel airbag was deployed. That can be accepted, but the airbag was not inflated. I bursted, not blowed out simply with the bag itself without air. After talking to honda, they repeat that the inflation process come and go quickly. I know that it come and go quickly. But I also know that it was not inflated at all. As a scientist and engineer who knows how to do experiments, who knows what can be a human bias, who knows the speed of human reactions, the only thing I can say is that I was sure and am sure, the bag was not inflated enough. I cannot tell how much it was inflated, my impression was that it was inflated somewhere between 5-10 percent of the total capacity. The vehicle was virtually stopped when the airbag was deployed. The bag did not touch any part of my body besides my right arm. My body did not move forward at all as the speed of at hitting was not high enough to move my back away from the seat. The airbag did nothing but burning my right arm, causing a second degree burn. Note that, the airbag was serviced…
Takata recall - my VIN # is showing 0 recalls, however, I have had to go in twice for a recall on my vehicle. Why is your website recording 0 recalls? I was in a four car accident in 2016 (I believe, may have been late 2015) and my airbags did not deploy. There was 1 car in front that didn't get hit bad, but the two vehicles behind me had their airbags deployed. I have the same honda pilot today, but it worries me that they should have deployed but didn't due to the issue with the inflators. This vehicle accident I had was prior to this inflator recall. I was driving in traffic on the highway and was moving, but very slowly.
Also reported on the 2006 Honda Pilot
Other body or interior problem
Other brake problem
Other driver assistance problem
Control arm, ball joint or bushing failure
Other speed control problem
Misfire or rough idle
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 22 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 22 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does airbag inflator rupture happen on the 2006 Honda Pilot?
Across 2 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 165,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is airbag inflator rupture on the 2006 Honda Pilot?
22 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.2 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed