CEN14LA504 · Saccio Thomas A SEAWIND 3000
Saccio Thomas A SEAWIND 3000 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Dane County Regional Truax Field (KMSN) to Monroe County Airport (KBMG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA504
- 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
Saccio Thomas A SEAWIND 3000
- Aircraft type
- Saccio Thomas SEAWIND 3000
- 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
- N516SW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dane County Regional Truax Field (KMSN), Madison, WITo Monroe County Airport (KBMG), Bloomington, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and one passenger were on a cross-country flight in a single-engine amphibian airplane. The pilot reported to an airport tower air traffic controller that the airplane had a low fuel pressure indication and that he planned to fly directly to the airport. However, the airplane impacted terrain about 3 miles north of the airport. One witness reported seeing the airplane on fire before it crashed. A postcrash fire consumed most of the composite-frame airplane.
An examination of the engine's accessories was not performed due to fire and thermal damage. Although the engine sustained fire damage, compression and continuity through the engine drive train was established, and no preimpact abnormalities were noted. A section of an alternator cable and a section of a fuel line that had signatures consistent with fraying and thermal damage, respectively, were examined to determine if chafing and electrical arcing had occurred between them. However, the examined sections exhibited no evidence of chafing and arcing. The accident is consistent with an in-flight fire; however, the source of the fire could not be determined because the examination did not reveal any preimpact abnormities.
Probable cause
An in-flight fire for reasons that could not be determined because the examination of the airplane did not reveal the source of the fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA504
- Event ID
- 20140918X93937
- Case number
- CEN14LA504
- 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: ba760c9cc1183a244b47445fd1a7ba92941922cb01d83a715b143e466dfa933e; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:26:11.723Z.