FTW04LA142 · Piper PA-34-200T
Piper PA-34-200T · Accident: fire en route
From Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ) to Palestine Municipal Airport (PSN)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA142
- 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-34-200T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- 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
- N2948S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pearland Regional Airport (LVJ), Pearland, TXTo Palestine Municipal Airport (PSN), Palestine, TX
- 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 · climb to 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Electrical system, battery
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Arcing
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 2,919-hour airline transport rated pilot stated that the airplane was climbing through an altitude of 5,500 feet mean sea level (msl) when he heard a "pop" and started to smell something "funny," but there was no visible smoke. He elected to go to the nearest airport and land, and noticed that his push-to-talk button was no longer operative. The pilot set code 7700 in the transponder and began a descent. During the descent, the cockpit began to fill with an "acrid black" smoke, and he saw flames through an opening in the instrument panel. The pilot attempted to suppress the fire with a hand-held fire extinguisher; however, he was unsuccessful. The pilot elected to execute an emergency landing in a field, collided with a barbed wire fence, and the airplane was then consumed by fire. Examination of the airplane's electrical system revealed that the main battery cable that ran between the main power relay and the main power bus was severed approximately two inches from the main bus. There was beading and localized melting on both ends. Under magnification, the damaged areas had an eroded appearance and there was some evidence of pitting. This type of damage is indicative of an electrical arcing event, which most likely ignited the insulation surrounding the main power wiring assembly and spread to other combustible items in the area. The initiating event for the arc could not be determined.
Probable cause
The in-flight fire that resulted from an electrical arc in the main battery cable near the main power bus. The cause of the arcing event could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA142
- Event ID
- 20040602X00712
- Case number
- FTW04LA142
- 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: 0397539f65b644dd1b05635a38e4775efd2442b09154fd7987357848d78345a5; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:14:01.700Z.