ERA17CA295 · Piper PA 28-161
Piper PA 28-161 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while standing
From Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ) to Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17CA295
- 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 28-161
- 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
- N84175
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Florida Regional Airport (SGJ), St Augustine, FLTo Palatka Municipal - Lt. Kay Larkin Field (28J), Palatka, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) start-up
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor, student pilot, and pilot-rated passenger flew on a short cross-country instructional flight to practice stop-and-go landings. On the first landing, after touchdown, the student pilot reduced the engine power to idle, and the engine lost total power. The airplane stopped on the runway, and the student pilot noted that the electric fuel pump was still on from landing and that the mixture control was full forward. He tried to start the engine while he "pumped" the throttle, but it did not start. He stated he thought the engine was flooded, so he turned off the electric fuel pump and pulled the mixture control to the "off" position, but again the engine would not restart. He then pushed the mixture control back to full forward and tried to start the engine while pumping the throttle a couple more times, but the engine did not start. The student pilot then saw smoke coming out of the engine cowling and notified the flight instructor and passenger.
The flight instructor performed the "engine fire on start checklist," told everyone to egress, and went to the cargo door to get the fire extinguisher while the passenger opened the engine cowling. When the flight instructor looked at the fire extinguisher, she noticed it was empty. The flight instructor and passenger noted that the fire was at the bottom of the engine around the carburetor and gaining in intensity. The passenger located a fire extinguisher at the airport's fixed-base operator, and when he returned, the engine compartment was fully engulfed by fire. Subsequently, the fire was extinguished by the portable extinguishers and the local fire department.
Examination of the airplane revealed that the engine compartment, engine mounts, and firewall were substantially damaged by fire. The flight instructor reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's overpriming of the engine and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action, which resulted in an engine fire.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17CA295
- Event ID
- 20170825X41235
- Case number
- ERA17CA295
- 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: 54358db992444a50a51ef8d85cd18fce4c282ed0915423285dd0cd85c56aafc0; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:45:34.204Z.