Narrative:

I was flying pilot; left seat. Flight was with 2 passengers. While climbing out my co-captain went back to shut the curtain after the climb checklist and came back and said he smelled an electrical smell. At this point we were climbing through around 23;000 feet. I had not smelled it yet. I asked him to take the controls and stepped back in the cabin to see if I could smell it. I still couldn't but now the passenger said she got a whiff of it. I immediately went back to the cockpit and at that point caught a momentary whiff of it. At this point my partner said he felt it was coming from the overhead panel. I then said lets land as soon as possible and declare an emergency. We declared the emergency at this point with center. I turned around and told the passenger what we were doing and she was very happy with that. By this time we were climbing through about 27;000 feet on the way to assigned of 32;000 feet but asked to level at 28;000 feet and asked for the return to the departure airport. It was the best closest and suitable landing point. ATC steered us back; my partner ran through the smoke/fume checklist and then the normal checklists. No smoke ever appeared but we did continue to get the intermittent smell of electrical burning in nature. We momentarily tried to call maintenance but the flight phone would not work. Because of this we decided to turn off all cabin ac services; which coincided with shutting down unnecessary electrical equipment per the checklist anyway. Because the phone wouldn't work we sent an ACARS message to the company to let them know what was going on. We landed uneventfully and were followed in by the fire trucks. No further smell was noted.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: G-200 passengers and crew detected smoke during climb so an emergency was declared; the Smoke and Fumes Checklist completed; and the flight returned to the departure airport.

Narrative: I was flying pilot; left seat. Flight was with 2 passengers. While climbing out my Co-Captain went back to shut the curtain after the Climb Checklist and came back and said he smelled an electrical smell. At this point we were climbing through around 23;000 feet. I had not smelled it yet. I asked him to take the controls and stepped back in the cabin to see if I could smell it. I still couldn't but now the passenger said she got a whiff of it. I immediately went back to the cockpit and at that point caught a momentary whiff of it. At this point my partner said he felt it was coming from the overhead panel. I then said lets land ASAP and declare an emergency. We declared the emergency at this point with Center. I turned around and told the passenger what we were doing and she was very happy with that. By this time we were climbing through about 27;000 feet on the way to assigned of 32;000 feet but asked to level at 28;000 feet and asked for the return to the departure airport. It was the best closest and suitable landing point. ATC steered us back; my partner ran through the smoke/fume checklist and then the normal checklists. No smoke ever appeared but we did continue to get the intermittent smell of electrical burning in nature. We momentarily tried to call Maintenance but the flight phone would not work. Because of this we decided to turn off all cabin ac services; which coincided with shutting down unnecessary electrical equipment per the checklist anyway. Because the phone wouldn't work we sent an ACARS message to the company to let them know what was going on. We landed uneventfully and were followed in by the fire trucks. No further smell was noted.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.