DEN07LA166 · Piper PA-28R-201T
Piper PA-28R-201T · Accident: fire en route
From Taos Regional Airport (SKX) to Nogales, AZ
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07LA166
- 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-28R-201T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N38765
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Taos Regional Airport (SKX), Taos, NMTo Nogales, AZ
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial Narrative disagrees
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Fluid, fuel › Leak
- Fuel system, line fitting › Disconnected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had just taken off and was in a climb heading southbound when he noticed a slight fuel smell followed by white smoke coming out of the right side of the dash. The pilot turned back toward the airport. Flames began coming from the right side of the airplane's cowling and then the engine lost power. The pilot performed a wheels up landing in rough terrain. The fire persisted as he evacuated the airplane. The airplane continued to burn until fire had consumed all but the airplane's engine, wing tips and empennage. An examination of the airplane showed a b-nut on the fuel return line had become unscrewed. No other anomalies with the airplane were found.
Probable cause
The unsecured B-nut fitting to the fuel return line which allowed for fuel spillage, an engine fire, and fuel exhaustion that led to the engine's subsequent failure. a factor contributing to the accident was the pilot's intentional wheels up landing in rough, uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07LA166
- Event ID
- 20071001X01479
- Case number
- DEN07LA166
- 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: 92c43dc3a45d0c7934fc5e4aea9899660d7d0fe6212a1f54e75dd77ca44499bb; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:23:04.358Z.