ERA15FA181 · Piper PA-31T1
Piper PA-31T1 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) on approach
From Orlando Executive Airport (ORL) to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15FA181
- 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
- 4 · 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
Piper PA-31T1
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N119RL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Executive Airport (ORL), Orlando, FLTo Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 36 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following an uneventful personal flight, the pilot contacted the air traffic control tower controller and was immediately cleared to land. About 36 seconds later, the pilot reported "smoke in the cockpit." When asked to repeat, the pilot repeated "smoke in the cockpit." The tower controller cleared the pilot to land on any runway. About 47 seconds after the initial call of smoke, the pilot reported "mayday mayday mayday mayday mayday (unintelligible)." The airplane then crashed about ¼ mile short of the airport in a wooded area and burned.
Security video showed the airplane pitch nose-down suddenly just before impact. The video revealed no visible smoke or fire trailing the airplane before ground impact.
The pilot reported about 1,221 hours of total flight time on his Federal Aviation Administration first class medical certificate, issued about two months prior to the accident. He completed an initial training course for the airplane make and model 1 week before the accident. The airplane had recently undergone an annual inspection and extensive upgrades to its avionics.
Both the left and right engines displayed contact signatures to their internal components characteristic of engines developing significant power at the time of impact, likely in the mid-to-high power range. The engines displayed no indications of any pre-impact anomalies or distress that would have precluded normal engine operation. Both propeller assemblies broke free from the engine during the crash sequence and the blades on both engines revealed signatures consistent with the development of power at impact.
The center fuselage and cockpit areas were completely consumed in the postcrash fire. An examination of all remaining wires, wire bundles, switches, terminals, circuit breakers, electrical components, instruments, and avionics did not reveal evidence of precrash thermal distress. However, a small fire just before impact likely would not have had time to create thermal damage that would be discernable after an extensive postcrash fire.
Probable cause
A rapid onset of smoke and/or fire inflight for reasons that could not be determined due to the postimpact fire and the condition of the wreckage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15FA181
- Event ID
- 20150412X71847
- Case number
- ERA15FA181
- 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: fae846e7536454b13be8af790c182437aa4749f89a7fab041c559741c1b196a4; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:35:32.884Z.