SEA02FA023 · Beech 58P
Beech 58P · Accident: fire during initial climb
From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02FA023
- 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
Beech 58P
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 58
- 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
- N132Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, IDTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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, fuel › Fumes
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Clearance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff for an after maintenance test flight, the pilot noted a fire in the left engine. The pilot reduced power and landed the aircraft on the remaining runway without further incident. The engine and systems were shut down prior to the pilot and passenger evacuating the aircraft. Fire personnel responded and applied a small amount of foam on the engine, which was at the time, only smoking. Inspection of the engine revealed that the fire was contained to the accessory section of the engine. Heat distress was found to the outboard nacelle web assembly and the top wing skin under the nacelle was warped. Further inspection found that an electrical arc in the alternator wiring due to chafing against a pneumatic tube was responsible for the ignition of the fire. Accumulated fuel vapor from a fuel cell leak that was an on-going maintenance discrepancy for approximately three weeks preceding the accident, and eventually fixed, was most probable the source of the fuel.
Probable cause
Improper clearance between an alternator wire and a pneumatic line and fuel fumes. The alternator wire chafe and arcing were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02FA023
- Event ID
- 20020104X00037
- Case number
- SEA02FA023
- 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: 4049f43b83b69506676e9ad74f59cd47ad0815ce80ddcdd4235c935208080890; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:12:57.957Z.