FTW96FA183 · Piper PA-28-151
Piper PA-28-151 · Accident: fire en route
From Smith Field (SLG) to Ponca City Regional Airport (PNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA183
- 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
- 4 · 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
- General aviation
- 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
Piper PA-28-151
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7845C
- Operator
- James Kinkaid
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Smith Field (SLG), Siloam Springs, ARTo Ponca City Regional Airport (PNC), Ponca City, OK
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Fire
- 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 › Disconnected
- Exhaust system, clamp › Incorrect
- Unknown › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on a two-leg cross-country instructional flight. Shortly after taking off on the second leg, an FAA FSS facility informed the pilots of a flight precaution for moderate to occasionally severe turbulence from the surface to 14,000 feet. After about 50 minutes of flight, the airplane crashed. There was evidence that the airplane crashed during an uncontrolled descent. Just before impact, a witness saw the airplane flying 'just above the tree tops' approximately one mile from the accident site. Witnesses near the crash site reported seeing 'white smoke and orange flame' coming from the airplane before impact. Examination of the wreckage revealed that incorrect exhaust system clamps had been used to attach the muffler to the right (#1 and #3) exhaust stacks. The clamps were identified as automotive types. There was evidence of an exhaust stack separation from the muffler and that exhaust gasses had entered the area around the carburetor fuel supply line. There also was evidence that an in-flight fire had burned through the lower left portion of the engine cowling, and an adjacent hole had been burned through the engine fire wall to the cabin area.
Probable cause
improper installation by unknown person(s) of incorrect exhaust system clamps, which led to an exhaust system disconnect and a subsequent engine compartment fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA183
- Event ID
- 20001208X05545
- Case number
- FTW96FA183
- 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: d2d66a6ac377913d0275f9a99c5ee46006664eb8a5b4b8233f414192b4f4a6f8; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:22:18.475Z.