ANC83IA053 · Cessna 401
Cessna 401 · Incident: fire en route
From Bethel Airport (BET) to Fairbanks International Airport (FAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC83IA053
- 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
- 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 401
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 401
- 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
- N7864F
- Operator
- Doug Bensing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (BET), BethelTo Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Exhaust system, clamp › Disconnected
- Exhaust system, turbocharger › Improper
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT RIGHT ENGINE STARTED EMITTING SPARKS FROM THE COWLING DURING NORMAL CRUISE. THE PILOT NOTED A DROP IN MANIFOLD PRESSURE SO HE REDUCED POWER ON THAT ENGINE AND THE SPARKS STOPPED. THE ACFT WAS LANDED AT BETHEL. THE FIRE DEPT. USED A FIRE EXTINGUISHING AGENT ON THE ENGINE. THE DAMAGE WAS MINOR. INSPECTION OF THE RIGHT ENGINE REVEALED A BROKEN BOLT ONTHE EXHAUST CLAMP WHICH SECURED THE EXHAUST PIPE TO THE TURBOCHARGER. THE CLAMP WHICH SECURED THE PIPE TO THE ENGINE NACELLE HAD SLIPPED OFF THE BRACKET. THIS ALLOWED THE PIPE TO SLIP DOWN AND RELEASE HOT EXHAUST GASES INTO THE ENGINE NACELLE. THIS HEATED THE ENGINE EXCESSIVELY AND REMOVED THE WASTE GATE FROM THE OPERATIONAL SYSTEM OF THE ENGINE. THE BROKEN BOLT IS A PART OF THE CLAMP P/N MVT 68637-375M.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC83IA053
- Event ID
- 20001214X42315
- Case number
- ANC83IA053
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1983-03-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 62ed560e13df39185653a7b21e6cb2b16026c386d536802526a65019a5bef966; retrieved 2026-09-23T22:54:41.905Z.