CHI00LA278 · Piper PA-28-236
Piper PA-28-236 · Accident: fire while taxiing
From Des Moines International Airport (DSM) to Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington-Normal (BMI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA278
- 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-28-236
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N451X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Des Moines International Airport (DSM)To Central Illinois Regional Airport at Bloomington-Normal (BMI), Bloomington, IL
- 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
- Fluid, hydraulic › Leak
- Landing gear, normal brake system › Fire
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Des Moines, IA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot experienced a left main gear brake fire while taxiing for takeoff. He reported that while taxing the airplane slowed "as if it were taxiing uphill, or a brake were dragging" so he added about 100 rpm of power to continue taxiing. The pilot reported, "When I attempted to set the brakes to check the engine and instruments, I found that I had no brakes." The pilot then requested a taxi clearance back to the fixed base operator on the airport to get the brakes checked. Another pilot on the same frequency announced to the pilot of N451X that his airplane was on fire. The pilot reported that he looked and saw dense, dark smoke coming from under the left wing. He shut down the engine, turned all switches off, and exited the airplane. The pilot reported the fire was in the area of the left landing gear almost directly under the left wing fuel tank. Hydraulic fluid was found on the ramp where the airplane had been parked for several days prior to the accident. The exact origin of the fluid leak could not be determined because of the extent of fire damage to the landing gear.
Probable cause
A hydraulic fluid leak which resulted in a landing gear brake fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA278
- Event ID
- 20001212X21694
- Case number
- CHI00LA278
- 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: ea49c2988ca076461d9946deaee166713455add0f31ccaf2bf90ea012e7d3cc5; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:30:07.382Z.