ERA09FA526 · Piper PA-32R-301T
Piper PA-32R-301T · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09FA526
- 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
- 4 · 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-32R-301T
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N2467Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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/smoke (non-impact)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route to the destination airport, about 3,800 feet over swampy terrain, the pilot declared a mayday and advised air traffic control that there was fire in the engine. The controller asked the pilot's intentions, noting that there were two airports about 25 nautical miles from the airplane's position. The pilot stated that he would like to continue to one of the airports. The controller instructed the pilot to descend to 3,000 feet, and during the next 4 minutes, the pilot made multiple transmissions, including; that he thought he had lost a cylinder, that there was still fire coming off the nose of the airplane, they were getting smoke in the cockpit, and he may have to land on the highway. Approximately five minutes, 45 seconds after his first transmission, the pilot stated "we're on fire." There were no further transmissions from the pilot.
A witness subsequently observed the airplane on fire, in a 20-degree nose-down, 40-degree left bank before it impacted terrain. Postflight examination of the wreckage revealed that the fire had emanated from a fuel leak caused by a fatigue fracture in the No. 5 pressurized fuel supply line. The pilot's operating handbook and Federal Aviation Administration publications noted that in case of fire, the pilot should immediately terminate the fuel flow to the engine and perform a forced landing. Although the failure of the fuel line would have, by itself, likely resulted in an accident, the pilot's loss of control of the airplane was a direct consequence of his failure to immediately perform the required emergency procedures.
Probable cause
Fatigue failure of the No. 5 engine cylinder fuel supply line, which resulted in an engine compartment fire. Also causal was the pilot's failure to immediately secure the engine/perform a forced landing after discovery of the fire, which resulted in the pilot's loss of control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09FA526
- Event ID
- 20090921X75928
- Case number
- ERA09FA526
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: bdedabb00d03b218b730df8973d0b0da066da3941758ecd285ff6137d193fabc; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:28:55.498Z.