Kusko Aviation Piper PA-32 accident
Piper PA-32 · Accident: fire en route
From AQH to Goodnews Airport (GNU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA055
- 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
- 0 · 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
Piper PA-32
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N9000N
- Operator
- Kusko Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AQHTo Goodnews Airport (GNU), GOODNEWS, AK
- 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 · climb to 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Exhaust system, manifold/pipe › Disconnected
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Judgment, poor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The air taxi pilot/company owner was taking off from his base of operations airport in rural Alaska with a new hire pilot and four passengers. About one mile from the airport, the pilot and passengers saw and smelled smoke. The pilot immediately returned and landed. At the pilot's request, the new hire pilot exited the airplane, checked the engine oil dipstick for security, and then reentered the cockpit. The pilot made another takeoff. Shortly after takeoff, smoke began to fill the cockpit, and flame was visible coming from the engine cowling. An emergency landing was made just off the airport on a small island. The occupants of the airplane extinguished the fire with water and a small fire extinguisher. Postaccident inspection disclosed a loose exhaust manifold and fire damage in the vicinity of the exposed exhaust ports. Nuts which affix the exhaust manifold to the engine were found in the bottom of the cowling. The airplane had maintenance performed about one month previously which necessitated the removal of the left manifold.
Probable cause
A disconnected exhaust manifold collector, improper maintenance of the airplane by company maintenance personnel, and the pilot's poor judgement in electing to initiate another flight after observing smoke in the cockpit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA055
- Event ID
- 20001208X07645
- Case number
- ANC97LA055
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 92de9923ae472575b714d46ec04ce086ff51db3b083ce08da684631dc4074453; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:39:02.895Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N9000N; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, KUSA.