ERA14LA390 · Cessna R182
Cessna R182 · Accident en route
From Republic Airport (FRG) to Republic Airport (FRG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA390
- 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 R182
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N292LC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NYTo Republic Airport (FRG), Farmingdale, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
The private pilot departed for the personal cross-country flight. The pilot reported that, after leveling off the airplane at 5,000 ft mean sea level (msl), he noted a fuel pressure drop and a fuel flow rate increase. The pilot requested a priority return to the departure airport, and when the airplane was on a high, right downwind leg of the traffic pattern, smoke appeared in the cockpit along with an "acrid, insulation smell." The pilot then declared an emergency and requested that fire rescue equipment be standing by at the airport.
The pilot added that, as the airplane descended through 1,400 ft msl and with the engine still running "normally," he observed flames entering the cockpit near the rudder pedals. The pilot completed the landing, stopped the airplane on the taxiway, and after he and the passenger disembarked, firefighters extinguished the fire.
Subsequent examination of the airplane revealed that the aluminum nipple fitting that connected the fuel line "T" to the carburetor was fractured and had separated, which allowed fuel to be pumped into the engine compartment. The nipple fitting was likely original to the airframe, which had about 4,010 total hours of operation.
The airframe manufacturer indicated that the fitting was likely cracked for some time before the complete separation occurred and that the crack should have been detectable during ground inspection before the failure through either fuel staining and/or a strong fuel odor. However, the investigation could not determine the condition of the fitting before the accident flight or at the time of the airplane's most recent annual inspection, which was performed 150 hours (about 6 months) before the accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the aluminum nipple fuel supply line fitting, which resulted in an engine compartment fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA390
- Event ID
- 20140818X83335
- Case number
- ERA14LA390
- 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: ad9986f701ac30f34c7677a6d3ab50fd6bfbd8b37eb2c62c75f792518da8b572; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:39:11.298Z.