CEN14LA159 · Cessna 310Q Q
Cessna 310Q Q · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while standing
From Akron Canton Regional Airport (KCAK) to Neil Armstrong Airport (KAXV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA159
- 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
Cessna 310Q Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N69980
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Akron Canton Regional Airport (KCAK), North Canton, OHTo Neil Armstrong Airport (KAXV), Wapakoneta, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the private pilot, the cross-country flight was uneventful. As he parked the airplane on the ramp at the conclusion of the flight, a "puff of smoke" came from below the instrument panel. The pilot immediately shut down the electrical system, but the smoke continued to increase. He completed the airplane shutdown checklist, then he and the passengers exited the airplane. After exiting the airplane, the pilot stated he could hear fire in the nose compartment and saw paint on the nose compartment beginning to discolor. He removed the nose access panel and extinguished the fire with a fire extinguisher.
The heater had a history of fuel leaks, as evidenced by cracks found in the heater and fuel evaporation marks in the fuel pump box. Airplane maintenance manuals and manufacturer service bulletins recommended recurring inspections of the heater system and fuel lines, but there was no documentation in the airplane's maintenance records that the inspections had been completed.
Probable cause
A fire due to a fuel leak of the cabin heater system. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate maintenance of the airplane, which failed to identify leaks in the heater system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA159
- Event ID
- 20140312X33622
- Case number
- CEN14LA159
- 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: d7967e9bc1c4292305a352dea86c1abad3aea7a43d914f34f1cde5587453d5da; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:23:50.107Z.