CEN23LA099 · Piper PA-28-160
Piper PA-28-160 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) before flight
From Chippewa Valley Regional Airport (EAU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA099
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 PA-28-160
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N9770J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chippewa Valley Regional Airport (EAU), Eau Claire, WITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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 attempted to start the engine six times before the battery died. He recharged the battery and attempted six more engine starts before ceasing further attempts. He said that during each engine start attempt, he applied the engine primer three times and pumped the throttle control two times. The throttle control was positioned about ¼ inch forward during each start attempt. At times during the start attempts, he placed the mixture control into idle cutoff and ran the engine starter. The pilot and one passenger exited the airplane while one passenger remained inside. The passenger who exited the airplane noticed a small flame inside the engine cowling. The pilot told the passenger inside the airplane to move the mixture control to idle cutoff. The passenger then exited the airplane. The fuel selector was not turned to the off position. A large fire the erupted from the engine compartment, which destroyed the airplane. Fire damage precluded determination of the fuel and ignition sources of the fire.
Probable cause
The engine fire that began for undetermined reasons following numerous engine start attempts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA099
- Event ID
- 20230206106682
- Case number
- CEN23LA099
- 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: 9d9d684d712fb5aab88417d73cdd607c2935d64516b7134b4e609c155c2a768b; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:18:35.967Z.