CHI99LA239 · Cessna 411
Cessna 411 · Accident: fire/explosion while standing
From 7D2 to Fort Scott Municipal Airport (FSK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA239
- 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 411
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 411
- 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
- N660EM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7D2To Fort Scott Municipal Airport (FSK), Fort Scott, KS
- 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 · engine(s) start-up
- 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/explosion
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot heard two loud backfires or explosions during the right engine start. He saw an area of the right wing expanded upward. The passenger saw flames coming from the right wing. The pilot shut down both engines. Two observers fought the fire with extinguishers. The pilot and passenger evacuated the airplane. The fire department chief said that a 'couple hundred foot' column of black smoke was observed and the response time was four to five minutes. He said the airplane was facing north, the wind was coming from the west, and the wind blew the flames away from the fuselage. He said the right wing outboard of the engine nacelle was on the ground with some wiring and some melted structure present between the nacelle and the wing. The tops of the wing and tip tank were melted and flames were observed coming out from the melted areas and from the nacelle area. Inspectors at the scene were unable to determine the source of the fire. The airplane records were reviewed and they did not reveal any anomalies.
Probable cause
Engine explosion/fire during start for undetermined reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA239
- Event ID
- 20001212X19198
- Case number
- CHI99LA239
- 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: 6c2d603695f796b46dfdc82fe7dd2cc57a74d765d465e58520a394579f4e368c; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:30:27.811Z.