CEN19LA314 · Piper PA28 181
Piper PA28 181 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while taxiing
From Tradewind Airport (TDW) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA314
- 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 PA28 181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA28
- 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
- N8384E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tradewind Airport (TDW), Amarillo, TXTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 38 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
- Taxi
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taxiing the airplane to a parking ramp after landing when the airplane lost left and right main landing gear braking effectiveness. The pilot continued the taxi and planned on performing turning maneuvers to slow the airplane enough to make a right turn onto the next taxiway and to perform 360° turns, if needed, to stop the airplane. When he tried two shallow turns to slow the airplane, he heard a loud bang and the airplane veered left and stopped. When he exited the airplane, he saw that the left brake was on fire. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed fire damage that extended from the left main landing gear wheel brake assembly to the left wing structure. There was also thermal damage to the right main wheel brake assembly. Examination revealed no mechanical anomalies of the airplane brake system that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the pilot's excessive taxi speed and use of braking resulted in a brake fire while taxiing.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper taxi speed and his excessive use of brakes, which resulted in a brake fire and substantial thermal damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA314
- Event ID
- 20190911X60317
- Case number
- CEN19LA314
- 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, coordinates. 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: df587187d711d928eb66e3e77e09bb02b95ebf0c9ccfd5d77738160461c89594; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:02:12.620Z.