CEN12FA395 · Nappi Tito C LANCAIR 235M
Nappi Tito C LANCAIR 235M · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Meadow Creek Airport (2IL9) to Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12FA395
- 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
- 1 · 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
Nappi Tito C LANCAIR 235M
- Aircraft type
- Nappi Tito LANCAIR 235
- 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
- N18TN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Meadow Creek Airport (2IL9), Monee, ILTo Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD), Rockford, IL
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As he was approaching the destination airport, the pilot of the amateur-built airplane reported that the airplane was on fire. The pilot landed the airplane in a cornfield with its wings level and at a 5 degree descent angle. He was not able to exit the airplane and perished. Examination of the airplane showed that the fire was concentrated in the area between the airplane’s firewall and instrument panel where the fuselage-mounted header tank would have been. Only portions of the header tank and the fuel system within the cockpit were identifiable. The remainder of the fuel system components were consumed by the fire. The postaccident examination did not show any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction or abnormalities, although the damage was too extensive to determine the reason for the in-flight fire.
Probable cause
The in-flight fire for a reason that could not be determined due to extensive damage from the fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12FA395
- Event ID
- 20120627X04941
- Case number
- CEN12FA395
- 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, 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: 820738487b0fe38a1c5bce227f630ce0317efc0ff710a90a1fb1d1c6eef94dd6; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:27:24.173Z.