CHI97LA255 · Taylorcraft L2A
Taylorcraft L2A · Accident: fire while standing
From 3SM to Tara Airbase Airport (5NC1)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA255
- 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
Taylorcraft L2A
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft L2
- 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
- N51372
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3SMTo Tara Airbase Airport (5NC1), TARA FIELD, NC
- 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
- Standing
- 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
- Fuel system, line fitting › Loose
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a ferry flight of the airplane since it had not received an annual maintenance inspection since November 15, 1994. Shortly after takeoff, he detected a fuel odor and returned to inspect the airplane. No fuel leaks were detected. Five minutes after the second takeoff, he felt drops of fuel falling from an area near the right wing overhead fuel line. Fuel appeared to be leaking into the cockpit around the fabric patch surrounding the main fuel inlet line. During the base-to-final turn, a large quantity of fuel poured into the cockpit. The pilot made a short field landing and turned off the magnetos and shut off the fuel control handle during landing rollout. He exited the airplane and tried to push the airplane off the runway. The fuel ignited and the airplane was engulfed in flames within seconds. An examination of the fuel system revealed that the right wing fuel tank's fuel line located at the forward inboard area was completely disconnected. The fuel line incorporated a flare type fitting that appeared to have come unscrewed from its receptacle.
Probable cause
the inadequate preflight by the pilot and the loose fuel line fitting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA255
- Event ID
- 20001208X08583
- Case number
- CHI97LA255
- 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: f197f944e2d4b8e5015bd66694532b544c847ecc72b64461bcc168b641fcbf73; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:51:29.031Z.