CEN14FA389 · Federsen Walter LANCAIR IVP
Federsen Walter LANCAIR IVP · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) on approach
From West Michigan Regional Airport (BIV) to Bluffton Airport (5G7)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14FA389
- 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
- 2 · 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
Federsen Walter LANCAIR IVP
- Aircraft type
- Federsen Walter LANCAIR IVP
- 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
- N40941
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Michigan Regional Airport (BIV), Holland, MITo Bluffton Airport (5G7), Bluffton, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Approach · IFR initial approach
- 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
- Destroyed
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
The private pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight in the experimental, amateur-built airplane. Radar track data of the accident flight showed the airplane descending from cruise altitude en route to the destination airport. An approach controller provided the pilot radar vectors to the final approach course at the destination airport and then cleared the flight for an RNAV GPS approach. The pilot complied with all of the controller's instructions up to this point, and he did not inform the controller of any anomalies with the flight. Shortly after the pilot was cleared for the approach, radar contact and radio communications were lost. Two witnesses reported observing the airplane shortly before the accident. One witness reported that the airplane appeared to be intact but on fire; he was unsure of the fire's location. A second witness reported that the airplane appeared to be wings level and descending slightly when he initially saw it and that there appeared to be a fire near the rear of the airplane. The airplane subsequently descended and impacted a residential yard. The airplane was severely fragmented during the impact sequence and consumed by fire.
A postaccident examination of the airplane wreckage revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions. The extent of the damage caused by the impact forces and fire precluded a determination of the source of the in-flight fire.
Probable cause
An in-flight fire for reasons that could not be determined due to the extent of impact and fire damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14FA389
- Event ID
- 20140727X44029
- Case number
- CEN14FA389
- 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: 93afa4a6e1866f2b531a3087f6f6b3a62f52e98786a298a1ab2ad89f8adb020a; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:22:37.774Z.