CHI02LA099 · Piper PA-46-310P
Piper PA-46-310P · Accident: fire en route
From South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS) to Storm Lake Municipal Airport (SLB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA099
- 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
Piper PA-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N9103Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South St Paul Municipal Airport/Richard E Fleming Field (SGS), South St. Paul, MNTo Storm Lake Municipal Airport (SLB), Storm Lake, IA
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fuel system, line fitting › Loose
- Ignition system, magneto grounding lead (p-lead) › Shorted
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage during a forced landing to a river after it experienced a complete loss of engine power after an engine fire in cruise flight. The pilot reported the preflight and takeoff were normal. He leveled off about 1,100 feet agl in order to stay below Class B airspace. He activated the standby vacuum pump and noted that it was operating properly. About 1-2 seconds after activating the vacuum pump, the alternator annunciator light came on. The two passengers smelled something burning about 2 seconds after the alternator annunciator light came on. The pilot reported that about 2 seconds later the engine lost power abruptly, without any roughness or surging. He decided to make a forced landing to the river. The examination of the engine compartment revealed an area of heat and fire damage near the top of the engine. Bare wires on the P-leads were found in the area of the heat damage. When the magnetos were checked, it was observed that the P-leads were grounded and no electrical current was getting to the magnetos. Further examination of the engine revealed that a B-nut fuel line connector on the fuel line that came from the engine driven fuel pump through the engine baffling was loose. The loose fuel connector was adjacent to the burned area where the P-leads were burned through. The engine logbook indicated that prior to the accident flight, the oil and oil filter had been changed. The standby vacuum pump was also replaced. The fuel line that was found with the loose B-nut was located directly above the standby vacuum pump.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to an electrical short of the P-lead, and loose fuel line connection as a result of improper maintenance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA099
- Event ID
- 20020402X00437
- Case number
- CHI02LA099
- 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: 775c06e6b7e0785c1c9520f973991f19260da1aadf844a20e9ed2d198b144d6b; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:02:20.763Z.