ATL99FA016 · Cessna 152
Philair Flight Center Cessna 152 · Accident: fire en route
From Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB) to New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99FA016
- 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
Cessna 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N48882
- Operator
- Philair Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB), FLTo New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport (EVB), NEW SMYRNA BCH, FL
- 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 · 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
- Fuselage, cabin › Fire
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after departure, the pilot advised Departure Control, 'I need an emergency landing. I've got fire onboard.' Approximately one minute later, radar contact with the airplane was lost. Several airborne witnesses observed the airplane collide with power lines prior to coming to rest in a 6-ft. retention pond. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the forward section of the cabin's interior upholstery was burned, and the left side of the pilot's seat was melted and charred; however, the underneath side of the carpet was not burned. No evidence of fire was found on the backside of the instrument panel. Several packs of cigarettes and two cigarette butts were found in the pilot's flight bag. Interviews with friends of the pilot revealed he was a smoker. The pilot's autopsy report noted the presence of 'diffuse, moderate, anthracotic reticulation' in the lungs. Anthrocosis results from the deposition of carbon deep within the lungs and is commonly found in individuals who smoke. The medical examiner's toxicology report indicated that the urine analysis was 'nicotine/cotinine positive.'
Probable cause
An interior cabin fire of undetermined origin. A factor was the power lines impacted during the emergency descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99FA016
- Event ID
- 20001211X11358
- Case number
- ATL99FA016
- 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: 7a095d403a590f05020d32c4eed2f79c47ee1d0ec2eb869e1fd5aff552f0e2d6; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:19:29.927Z.