Frontier Flying Service Flight 5811
Piper PA-31-350 · Incident: fire en route
From Ralph M Calhoun Memorial Airport (TAL) to Fairbanks International Airport (FAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00IA063
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N3536B
- Operator
- Frontier Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ralph M Calhoun Memorial Airport (TAL), TANANA, AKTo Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AK
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Lubricating system, oil gasket › Deteriorated
- Supplier/distributor of parts › Material inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A passenger aboard a twin-engine, scheduled commuter airplane reported to the pilot that there was black smoke, fire, and oil coming from the left engine. The pilot shut down the left engine, made a 180-degree turn to return the departure airport, and alerted emergency fire crews to standby for his return. On arrival, fire department personnel extinguished the fire. The airplane was equipped with two TEXTRON Lycoming TIO-540-J2BD engines. A postincident inspection revealed the oil filter adapter plate gasket material displayed obvious signs of degradation and deformation. A subsequent investigation revealed that the manufacturer that supplied TEXTRON Lycoming with the oil filter adapter plate gaskets, recently changed material suppliers. The new gasket material did not meet the existing specifications, and deteriorated when in contact with hot engine oil. A subsequent oil leak sprayed engine oil within the engine cowling, near the rear of the engine, adjacent to the engine turbocharger.
Probable cause
An in-flight oil leak due to the deterioration of oil filter adapter plate gasket material, and the supplier's distribution of inadequate material. A factor associated with the accident was the engine manufacturer's inadequate quality control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00IA063
- Event ID
- 20001212X21136
- Case number
- ANC00IA063
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 4221382966190e891a91fa4b9e1889a1477ebeb3f45b5a12d205e458fc5644f7; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:35:30.381Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N3536B; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, FFSA.