WPR14LA394 · Lorentzen LANCAIR LEGACY
Lorentzen LANCAIR LEGACY · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while maneuvering
From 5SD · Reno, NV to 5SD · Reno, NV
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA394
- 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
Lorentzen LANCAIR LEGACY
- Aircraft type
- Lorentzen LANCAIR LEGACY
- 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
- N368W
- Operator
- Wolstenholme Robert F
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From 5SD · Reno, NVTo 5SD · Reno, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was participating in an air race when an in-flight fire in the engine compartment and a loss of engine power occurred. He was unable to discharge the fire extinguisher and declared an emergency. He flew off the racecourse and touched down the airplane in rough terrain short of a runway.
Each side of the engine had exhaust pipes from each cylinder that connected to a manifold via a slip joint on each pipe. The manifold connected to a turbocharger at the rear end of the engine, and the turbocharger was mounted to the airframe. Postaccident examination revealed that the two bolts that attached the right turbocharger to its mounting bracket had sheared. The exhaust pipes had pulled down and away from the cylinders, likely due to the weight of the turbocharger and exhaust manifold, which created a gap at the slip joint for the No. 1 cylinder, which was the most aft cylinder and closest to the turbocharger. This allowed hot exhaust gases to escape into the engine compartment and start a fire in the immediate vicinity of the gap. There was also a broken weld at the induction tube that carried turbocharged air from the right turbocharger.
Probable cause
The shearing of mounting bolts that attached the right turbocharger to its mounting bracket during an air race, which resulted in hot exhaust gases leaking into the engine compartment and starting a fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA394
- Event ID
- 20140929X25333
- Case number
- WPR14LA394
- 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: 7358ca8c87a051993bb22fef7eb09054ae75cac1b1c84523da51ae47758f3f28; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:48:41.310Z.