ERA10IA147 · Piper PA-46-310P
Big Sky Piper PA-46-310P · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Winchester Municipal Airport (BGF) to Iowa City Municipal Airport (IOW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10IA147
- 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
- Incident
- 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-46-310P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- 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
- N43368
- Operator
- Big Sky
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winchester Municipal Airport (BGF), Winchester, TNTo Iowa City Municipal Airport (IOW), Iowa City, IA
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that while in cruise flight the alternator light illuminated and he smelled smoke. He declared an emergency, diverted to the nearest airport, and noted a complete loss of engine power during the descent. The pilot and passengers evacuated the airplane, and noted that light smoke emanated from the cowling for several minutes after landing. Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector revealed fire damage in the engine compartment between the firewall and rear engine baffle. The fuel control unit feed and return lines were found loose at the rear engine baffle fittings immediately above the starter and starter adapter. Inspection of maintenance invoices revealed that the starter adapter was replaced approximately 9 hours before the accident.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the mechanic’s failure to properly secure the fuel control unit fuel lines after replacement of the starter adapter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10IA147
- Event ID
- 20100222X85652
- Case number
- ERA10IA147
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-02-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c9d795215c129131ca2d4b2ddb33dda7a838d630bb91ff6c04dd2a7580b7478a; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:41:51.069Z.