Ameriflight Beech C-99 incident
Beech C-99 · Incident: fire en route
From Portland International Airport (PDX) to Roseburg Regional Airport (RBG)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01IA093
- 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
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech C-99
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft C-99
- 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
- N992AF
- Operator
- Ameriflight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland International Airport (PDX), Portland, ORTo Roseburg Regional Airport (RBG), Roseburg, OR
- 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
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Shorted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise flight at 9,000 feet and in instrument meteorological conditions, he smelled a burning order, then observed a flame coming from the main circuit breaker panel on the right side. While the pilot was talking to air traffic control, the flame extinguished leaving smoke in the cockpit. The pilot diverted to a nearby airport and landed without further incident. Maintenance personnel found that a 1/4 inch hole had burned through the circuit breaker panel surface fascia. The fire was apparently caused by an internal short in the backlighting panel immediately under the fascia panel. The backlight panel contains numerous small-gage wires and grain-of-wheat light bulbs. The malfunction did not draw sufficient current to trip a circuit breaker.
Probable cause
A short to electrical wiring while in cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01IA093
- Event ID
- 20010522X00996
- Case number
- SEA01IA093
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-05-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 026eb95ee375bc0a80a1a207a34e7f759932e62d01af4005a2332bba2c035ac5; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:13:35.260Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N992AF; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.