ERA18LA010 · Beech A24 R
Beech A24 R · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Dare County Regional Airport (MQI) to Dare County Regional Airport (MQI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA010
- 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
Beech A24 R
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 24
- 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
- N400LE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dare County Regional Airport (MQI), Manteo, NCTo Dare County Regional Airport (MQI), Manteo, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff on the instructional flight, the pilot receiving instruction heard a "pop" sound; the flight instructor saw smoke coming from the right lower portion of the instrument panel and felt a melted wire contact her leg. The pilot receiving instruction continued to fly the airplane briefly, then the flight instructor took the controls. With inadequate runway remaining ahead on which to land, the instructor initiated a turn to return to the runway. The airplane impacted the ground and slid about 500 ft, coming to rest upright and resulting in substantial damage to the airframe. Postaccident examination of the cockpit revealed that electrical wires of a recently-installed avionics switch had arced against the top aft edge of the adjacent autopilot control unit and also at the edge of a vertical support member. The wires did not have circuit protection, nor was there any mechanical protection or supports present along the length of the wires to prevent chafing, contrary to FAA guidance. The pilots' failure to secure the electrical system from memory in response to the cockpit smoke would not have mitigated the hard landing, but may have decreased the smoke in the cockpit and lessened the urgency to land.
Probable cause
The failure of maintenance personnel to properly secure wiring during an electrical component installation, which resulted in arcing and smoke in the cockpit. Contributing to the outcome was the flight instructor's failure to attain a proper descent rate during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA010
- Event ID
- 20171018X34200
- Case number
- ERA18LA010
- 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: 4190aa739f0699352fcbc9627d799c467bc66693418626ab540090ab3d8ca484; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:56:40.478Z.