ATL07LA034 · Greenhaw, William Lancair 360
Greenhaw, William Lancair 360 · Accident: fire while taxiing
From Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1) to Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07LA034
- 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
Greenhaw, William Lancair 360
- Aircraft type
- Greenhaw William LANCAIR 360
- 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
- N117BG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1), Guntersville, ALTo Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (8A1), Guntersville, AL
- 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
- 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
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, installation, not approved
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while taxiing following a normal landing he smelled fiberglass and then observed smoke and fire coming from the engine cowling. He immediately stopped the airplane, and egressed. He said the airplane continued to burn. Examination of the airplane by an FAA Inspector found the airplane partially consumed by fire. Examination of the engine revealed that the fuel line from the fuel servo to the flow divider had melted from the connection at the fuel servo to the cylinder baffling. The hose was still connected to the flow divider and retained torque on the fitting. The hose was removed and examination provided that the approximately half of its original length had been burnt away or melted. Examination revealed that the hose was of non-aviation automotive origin and identified as SAE. The construction of the hose was of plastic with a vinyl outer coating. Examination of the fuel line fitting still attached to the fuel servo revealed threads in the socket were clean with no residual hose material present in the threads. There was a light amount of melted plastic on the outer end of the socket. The hose had not been properly assembled, thus allowing fuel to escape into the engine compartment.
Probable cause
Failure of an unapproved automotive fuel line installed by the owner/pilot mechanic which resulted in an engine fire during taxi after landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07LA034
- Event ID
- 20070201X00122
- Case number
- ATL07LA034
- 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, coordinates. 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: d5096ab366bf975df7df28908c763c270b0b31eef0d36f49c2ca6171d946ec6d; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:04:12.332Z.