Voyager Aviation Croup Cessna 310R accident
Cessna 310R · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Carlisle Barracks Heliport (N95) to Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95FA195
- 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
- Accident
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N2640L
- Operator
- Voyager Aviation Croup
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carlisle Barracks Heliport (N95), Carlisle, PATo Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport (DET), Detroit, MI
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine compartment › Fire
- Exhaust system, stack › Corroded
- Exhaust system, stack › Failure
- Exhaust system, stack › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While flying at night, about 10,000 feet msl, the flight reported an engine problem, declared an emergency, and requested vectors to the nearest airport for landing. When queried, the pilot stated, '...we got a fire in the right engine.' While diverting, the pilot was unable to maintain altitude (level flight) until the airplane descended to about 1700 feet. The tops of ridges in the area were about 2500 to 2800 feet. Subsequently, about 15 miles from the alternate airport, the airplane hit trees during darkness at an elevation of about 1720 feet and crashed. Examination of the right engine revealed that the last 8 to 12 inches of the right overboard tube had separated circumferentially from the exhaust system. A metallurgical examination of the exhaust stack revealed evidence of fatigue; there were numerous hot gas corrosion cracks that had originated at the interior surface and had propagated through the wall thickness of the stack. There was evidence that a breach of the right exhaust stack allowed hot, high velocity gases to escape and initiate a fire. The Altoon weather was in part: 8,000' scattered, 3 miles visibility with fog and haze.
Probable cause
propagation of corrosion cracks in the right engine overboard exhaust stack and fatigue failure of the exhaust stack, which resulted in escape of hot/high velocity gases, in-flight fire, emergency descent, and subsequent collision with trees during an approach for a forced landing. Darkness and mountainous/hilly terrain were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95FA195
- Event ID
- 20001207X04342
- Case number
- NYC95FA195
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 026457235847bedecb1822cc0930e4b93a377957db7e35207b9d50108738d4a1; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:41:32.720Z.