CEN16LA021 · Piper PA 28-235
Piper PA 28-235 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) during landing
From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR) to Courtney Plummer Airport (9WN1)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA021
- 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
Piper PA 28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N3979X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR), CHICAGO/AURORA, ILTo Courtney Plummer Airport (9WN1), Winneconne, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a cross-country flight. He reported that he could tell something was wrong as he started the descent for landing. He added that the engine was running "rough" and that it "quit" as the airplane touched down. He then observed black smoke and fire exiting out of the cowling.
An examination of the wreckage revealed that the airplane sustained discoloration, deformation, and extensive thermal damage to the right side of the fuselage forward of the empennage, the cockpit, and the engine cowling. The fuel line going to the carburetor was separated. A detailed examination of the fuel line revealed that it had separated due to bending overstress with evidence of exposure to high temperature. However, the on-scene and detailed examinations could not determine the source of the ignition.
Probable cause
An engine compartment fire during landing, which resulted in extensive fire damage, for reasons that could not be determined during examinations of the remaining wreckage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA021
- Event ID
- 20151026X64418
- Case number
- CEN16LA021
- 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: 9ffe3519230d8e22cddb0c3f7a7e7c0a67af4a5eec092c39c6ea4f66f0e7c13e; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:55:24.027Z.