CHI00LA267 · Piper PA-32-300
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: fire while taxiing
From an unrecorded airport to Jim Kelly Field (LXN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA267
- 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
Piper PA-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N4256R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Jim Kelly Field (LXN), Lexington, NE
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Landing gear, normal brake system › Fire
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of North Platte, NE, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage from a brake fire while taxiing. The pilot was uninjured. The pilot stated, "After crossing the active it is about 1.5 miles to the end of the taxiway. Taxing down to the end I would have to push the brakes every once in a while to keep at a slow taxi. The rpms were less than 1000. ... Set my parking brake, and proceeded with the run up. When I was checking for the controls were free and clear I noticed a little smoke coming from underneath the left wing. I then proceeded to shut off the aircraft and got out and looked at what was wrong. There was smoke coming from the wheel area. [A]fter about 30 seconds it turned into a small fire on the disk brakes. I got on the radio and called for help and got right back out of the plane. ... It took roughly 10 minutes for someone to show up. The first one on the scene was a worker with a pickup. He had a fire extinguisher with him and that put it out. ... My 180 has the same brake system setup as the Cherokee 6. I fly sometimes 3-4 times a week. I have accumulated a lot of hours in a short time. Even though I have had my license for less than a year I believe I did nothing wrong in this case." The airplane's brake system was examined and no anomalies were found.
Probable cause
the brake fire while taxiing for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA267
- Event ID
- 20001212X21685
- Case number
- CHI00LA267
- 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: 2ac2f4ffa22d5149dc8fbc3b72aa6a5b25245c770933e3b9772d36edf7bb7eca; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:32:42.935Z.