WPR18LA207 · Cessna 172 S
Cessna 172 S · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) on approach
From Newark Heath Airport (VTA) to Zanesville Municipal Airport (ZZV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA207
- 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
Cessna 172 S
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N785SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newark Heath Airport (VTA), Newark, OHTo Zanesville Municipal Airport (ZZV), Zanesville, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2001)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that, several minutes after takeoff for the personal flight, he maneuvered the airplane to enter the traffic pattern to practice touch-and-go landings. Shortly after, he noticed a fire near the rudder pedals. He expedited his approach, and the fire continued to grow while he landed the airplane. After landing, he safely egressed from the airplane; a few seconds later, the cockpit area was engulfed in flames. The airplane was destroyed.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed evidence of a fuel-fed fire that had emanated from the rear, lower center portion of the engine. Extensive thermal damage was in the area where the mechanical fuel pump is mounted to the oil cooler. The oil cooler's bottom hose connection was separated from the oil cooler, and the fuel pump's bottom portion was missing. Due to the fire damage, the exact initiation point and source of the fire could not be determined.
There were no maintenance write-ups indicating a fuel leak or odors in the previous 20 flight hours.
Probable cause
An in-flight fuel-fed fire from an unknown source for reasons that could not be determined due to the extensive fire damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA207
- Event ID
- 20180729X13510
- Case number
- WPR18LA207
- 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: 04c8295d869cf2649d398f0f549101e6c1444a909764034a7a1d428ddc7e8964; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:01:13.287Z.