ERA23LA100 · Foutz Robert V COZY MARK IV
Foutz Robert V COZY MARK IV · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while taxiing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA100
- 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
- 0
- 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
Foutz Robert V COZY MARK IV
- Aircraft type
- Foutz Robert COZY MARK
- 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
- N121
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2018)
- 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 · from runway
- 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 pilot of the experimental, amateur-built airplane had completed an hour-long local flight, and he was taxiing the airplane back to his hangar when the engine stopped. The pilot then spent about 5 minutes trying to restart the engine before smoke began to enter the cockpit through a heat duct tunnel. The pilot then turned off the fuel, the master switch, and magnetos and exited the airplane. The pilot reported smoke was coming from the cowling in the rear of the pusher-configured airplane. He then emptied a fire extinguisher into the cowling, and the smoke decreased, but did not stop. Flames eventually ignited the cowling and then spread to the fuselage. The local fire department arrived and extinguished the fire. The fire nearly consumed the fuselage and the inboard portions of both wings. The pilot subsequently disposed of the airplane’s wreckage, and it could not be examined after the accident; therefore, the origin of the fire could not be determined.
Probable cause
A fire of undetermined origin during an attempted engine restart while taxiing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA100
- Event ID
- 20230104106533
- Case number
- ERA23LA100
- 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, cause areas. 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: 48740f2a821aeca858c4eca494af7f21ce2bed49578ead52b36aa7ecfe0146fb; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:13:34.804Z.