Northeast Aviation Piper PA-23-250 accident
Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: fire while taxiing
From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU) to Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA047
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- 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
- N40259
- Operator
- Northeast Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU), Morristown, NJTo Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF), Buffalo, NY
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Cabin heater › Overtemperature
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing, as the pilot pulled into the ramp area, he noticed an orange glow at his feet, and notified airport personnel over the radio that he had a fire in the airplane. The pilot brought the airplane to a stop, and airport crash fire rescue extinguished the fire. Examination of the airplane revealed the fire burnt a hole through the fuselage skin in the area of the Janitrol heater, just aft of the left wing root. The entire area forward of the Janitrol heater, including the wiring and plumbing of the heater, as well as the cockpit and cabin was consumed by fire. The pilot reported that his normal procedure for using the Janitrol heater was to turn it off at the same time he extended the landing gear while on approach. The Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH), Description and Operations section stated, "The three positions of the cabin heat control switch are 'HEAT,' 'FAN,' and 'OFF'...It is advisable to place the switch in the fan position for several minutes after the heater has been operating to allow the unit to cool down before it is turned off." The Normal Procedures section of the POH required that the switch be turned to the "FAN" position while completing the Before and After Landing checklists. The Shutdown checklist called for the switch to be switched to the "OFF" position.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper procedure with regard to the cabin heater, which resulted in the over temperature of the heater and subsequent fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA047
- Event ID
- 20031222X02072
- Case number
- NYC04LA047
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-12-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 18216bec57b208a4a69e452a74e3d6476479e2e79453402a8d118b204c599cd5; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:33:44.628Z.