ATL92LA089 · Beech 23A-19
Beech 23A-19 · Accident: fire en route
From an unrecorded airport to St Simons Island Airport (SSI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL92LA089
- 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
Beech 23A-19
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 23
- 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
- N7973L
- Operator
- Walker and Associates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo St Simons Island Airport (SSI), Brunswick, GA
- 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 · 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Exhaust system, muffler › Deteriorated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF THE PILOT NOTICED SMOKE COMING FROM UNDER THE INSTRUMENT PANEL. HE ELECTED TO RETURN TO THE DEPARTURE AIRPORT WHERE HE MADE AN EMERGENCY LANDING. THE PILOT TAXIED THE AIRPLANE INTO A GRASSY AREA WHERE IT BURNED. EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED THAT THE EXHAUST MUFFLER HAD DETERIORATED AND THERE WAS A HOLE IN THE MUFFLER ASSEMBLY. THE FIRE DESTROYED THE AIRFRAME TACHOMETER, THEREFORE THE AIRFRAME TOTAL TIME AND TIME SINCE THE LAST ANNUAL INSPECTION WERE NOT DETERMINED.
Probable cause
THE DETERIORATION OF THE EXHAUST MUFFLER WHICH RESULTED IN AN INFLIGHT FIRE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL92LA089
- Event ID
- 20001211X14383
- Case number
- ATL92LA089
- 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: 4a28ecef4ae3b30982f78e96298bac42a55dc888b582b5dea5f84d56563493bd; retrieved 2026-09-23T03:12:35.736Z.