FTW01LA113 · Cessna 172RG
Airman Flight School Cessna 172RG · Accident: fire while maneuvering
From University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport (OUN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA113
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 172RG
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9696B
- Operator
- Airman Flight School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport (OUN), Norman, OKTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor and pilot receiving instruction, the student was demonstrating a commercial flight maneuver, at 2,100 feet agl, when they smelled an odor similar to "electrical burning." The instructor told the student to terminate the maneuver and return to the airport. While the student was terminating the maneuver, visible smoke appeared in the cabin, and heat was felt coming from beneath the instrument panel. The instructor assumed control of the airplane. The engine was shut down and a forced landing was executed to a field. During the landing, the airplane encountered soft terrain, nosed over and came to rest inverted. A plastic hydraulic reservoir, from the hydraulic power pack, was found melted and laying on the cockpit floor. The hydraulic power pack was examined and functionally tested at Aero Electric Inc., Wichita, Kansas, under supervision of the FAA. According a report from Aero Electric, the power pack and its related components operated within manufacturer's specifications.
Probable cause
the in-flight fire for an undetermined reason, which resulted in a forced landing. A contributory factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA113
- Event ID
- 20010504X00883
- Case number
- FTW01LA113
- 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: f42eabcd22fb8e78a29edf224ab0689b0ac5da321505f46021efddc6a24275f7; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:57:59.616Z.