NYC97LA068 · Cessna 650
Cessna 650 · Accident: fire on approach
From Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ) to Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA068
- 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
- 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
Cessna 650
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 650
- 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
- N553AC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wellsville Municipal Airport - Tarantine Field (ELZ), Wellsville, NYTo Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Arcing
- Manufacturer › Insufficient standards/requirements, aircraft
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While being vectored for the final approach in visual conditions, at night, the flight crew lost radio contact with the control tower and smelled smoke aboard the airplane. They continued the approach and landed, and after reaching their parking space, were notified by ground personnel of flames penetrating the top of the aft fuselage between the engines. The fire was extinguished by airport fire fighting personnel. Postaccident investigation found a hydraulic return line in the aft equipment bay had evidence of electrical arcing and a small hole through which fluid could escape. An 115-volt electrical line used to heat the horizontal stabilizer also had evidence of rubbing on its surface. In addition to the hydraulic fluid, a pressurized fuel line to the APU was damaged by the fire and leaking fuel. A test simulating an electrical line arcing with a leaking hydraulic line resulted in a fire during each of the three tests. The production standards that Cessna used did not specify a minimum space between electrical lines and flammable fluid lines. The FAA had certified the airplane without requiring Cessna to specify a minimum spacing between electrical lines and flammable fluid lines.
Probable cause
A combination hydraulic fluid and fuel-fed fire which originated from electrical arcing, due to the lack of an adequate production standard from Cessna for the separation of flammable fluid lines and electrical lines. A factor was the lack of oversight from the FAA, which allowed Cessna to space the flammable fluid lines and electrical lines at too close a position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA068
- Event ID
- 20001208X07808
- Case number
- NYC97LA068
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-04-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 31c282699b86e918145bfbe9f926eb24abd0b1e11752349962cc94b8e3ab8485; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:01:48.506Z.