LAX96LA233 · Van Horn VELOCITY
Van Horn VELOCITY · Accident: fire en route
From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA233
- 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
- 1 · 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
Van Horn VELOCITY
- Aircraft type
- Van Horn VELOCITY
- 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
- N444BG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR)To not recorded
- 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
- Fuel system, line fitting › Leak
- Lubricating system, oil line › Leak
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While cruising at 4,000 feet during a personal flight, the pilot reported to the air traffic controller that he was about 10 miles from the airport, was experiencing an engine problem, and was declaring an emergency. About 1 minute later, he stated that he had a 'fire on board.' The pilot made a forced landing about 2 miles from the airport. During the landing, the airplane collided with a pole, then was destroyed by fire. Examination of the wreckage by an FAA inspector revealed that the fire had been concentrated in the firewall area. Fuel and oil lines were found loose, and the fire left traces of both fuel and oil involvement. No specific point of origin was determined. Investigation also revealed that the engine had been modified from its original factory design.
Probable cause
an engine compartment fire, which originated in flight from loose fuel and/or oil lines near the engine's firewall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA233
- Event ID
- 20001208X06034
- Case number
- LAX96LA233
- 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: 4c33557f17ea10bf3a78c29956524cd867199d1e70de714339e935730281130d; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:20:03.509Z.