Trans States Airlines Aerospatiale ATR-42-300 incident
Aerospatiale ATR-42-300 · Incident: fire en route
From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI93IA124
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Aerospatiale ATR-42-300
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale ATR-42
- 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
- N426TE
- Operator
- Trans States Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL), St. Louis, MOTo 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, lavatories › Fire
- Passenger › Procedures/directives, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A PASSENGER HAD DISCARDED A CIGARETTE BEFORE LEAVING THE LAVATORY. THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT FOUND SMOKE ISSUING FROM THE WASTE BIN AND EXTINGUISHED THE FIRE. THERE WAS NO INDICATION IN THE COCKPIT OF SMOKE OR FIRE. A LATER CHECK OF THE SMOKE DETECTOR SHOWED IT DID NOT ACTIVATE WHEN SMOKE WAS GENERATED IN THE LAVATORY. THE OPERATOR ADHERED TO THE AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURER'S RECOMMENDED MAINTENANCE PROGRAM; THE PROGRAM CONTAINED NO PROCEDURE OR INTERVAL FOR CLEANING SMOKE DETECTORS OR DUCTING. THERE WAS NO OPERATIONAL TEST WHICH DEMOSTRATED A DETECTOR COULD SENSE SMOKE.
Probable cause
THE PASSENGER'S FAILURE TO EXTINGUISH A CIGARETTE BEFORE PLACING IT INTO THE LAVATORY WASTE BIN. FACTORS RELATED TO THE INCIDENT WERE: AN INOPERATIVE SMOKE DETECTOR IN THE LAVATORY, THE MANUFACTURER'S INADEQUATE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM, AND INADEQUATE REVIEW OF THE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM BY THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI93IA124
- Event ID
- 20001211X11940
- Case number
- CHI93IA124
- 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, damage. 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: 920d5ac91fd741d0fd3e458dd7671ba07118891d78fd757e0bd2c66ca6201fa5; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:39:44.414Z.