CEN20LA058 · Piper PA46 350P
Mission Flight Charter Services Piper PA46 350P · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From San Antonio International Airport (SAT) to San Antonio International Airport (SAT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA058
- 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 PA46 350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA46
- 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
- N350XL
- Operator
- Mission Flight Charter Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Antonio International Airport (SAT), San Antonio, TXTo San Antonio International Airport (SAT), San Antonio, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2015)
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During flight, the pilot observed a warning message on the primary flight display indicating “AVIFAN FAIL.” As he was trouble-shooting the electrical system, smoke began to enter the cabin from the front of the cockpit. The pilot suspected an electrical fire. He disconnected the autopilot, lowered the landing gear, and turned off the battery master switch. After he declared a “Mayday,” the pilot searched for the nearest airport, which was about 13-miles from his position. Smoke was still coming into the cabin, and the pilot's "eyes were burning." The pilot decided that he had to land the airplane without delay because of the potential fire. He decided to land the airplane in what appeared to be a flat field directly ahead.
As the airplane approached the landing point, the pilot extended the first notch of flaps, the airplane crossed over a fence, and landed. The pilot immediately realized that the airplane was fast and on a collision course with another fence and trees, so he rotated the airplane and cleared the obstacles. He immediately turned the airplane to the right and landed the airplane on an adjacent roadway. Upon landing, the airplane hit a roadway signpost with the right wing and the airplane spun 90 degrees to the right, and came to rest with the nose against a roadway guardrail. The outboard section of the right wing sustained substantial damage.
Detailed examination of the airplane’s electrical system revealed thermal damage and discoloration on a circuit board of one of the avionics cooling fans. The thermal damage to the fan circuit board would have likely produced smoke that would be irritating to the eyes, which was consistent with what the pilot reported. No other damage or electrical anomalies were found during the examination.
Probable cause
The in-flight electrical fire, which resulted in smoke in the cabin and an emergency landing. Contributing to the accident was the unsuitable terrain for the emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA058
- Event ID
- 20200113X82223
- Case number
- CEN20LA058
- 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: 12f6fa0fd0ce206e61c5a18508b4ba341b7e8e0ac43edd9914bd1d5cba2f7c09; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:55:15.356Z.