ERA23FA137 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23FA137
- 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
- 1 · 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
Piper PA-28-161
- 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
- N8149R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1980)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed with two passengers on a local “discovery flight.” After completion of the 40-minute flight, while established on a 3-mile final approach for landing, the pilot announced there was smoke in the cockpit and he requested an immediate landing. The pilot subsequently broadcast a “Mayday” over the tower frequency. The tower controller reissued an earlier landing clearance and observed smoke emanating from the left side of the airplane as it descended rapidly from view. Local doorbell camera and surveillance video captured the airplane in a wings-level attitude, with smooth continuous engine sound until contact with trees and terrain. Examination of the wreckage identified copper tubing and brass fittings associated with the oil pressure indicating system. These copper oil lines and fittings were on the cockpit side of the firewall and slightly offset toward the left side. The oil pressure tubing exhibited a branch line that was not part of the original design. It is not known exactly where this line was routed behind the instrument panel. At the end of this branch line a brass fitting exhibited melting consistent with very localized heating caused by electrical arcing. The appearance was that of sustained or repeated arcing as it melted through the fitting across multiple flats. The post-crash fire resulted in widespread, diffuse thermal exposure of the wreckage and aircraft components as exhibited by the melted regions of the fitting. If the fitting had reached its melting point due to the postcrash fire, it would have melted entirely without the localized melted region and sharp demarcation shown between melted and intact material. Two previous reported incidents of smoke in the cockpit of the accident airplane occurred about 2 months and about 50 hours before the accident; however, the investigation could not conclusively determine if those events were related to the event during the accident flight. It is likely that an intermittent electrical short circuit took place involving the fitting on the end of the oil pressure indicating line. Repeated electrical arcing eventually compromised the fitting enough to allow oil leakage and eventual ignition of the leaking oil, which resulted in an in-flight fire.
Probable cause
An in-flight fire due to a compromised oil pressure line fitting, which resulted in a collision with terrain during a subsequent emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23FA137
- Event ID
- 20230306106819
- Case number
- ERA23FA137
- 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: b6de224ef323d463873700e90eaf50cc01f626e9099f3fbc3f9fac01b766cd6b; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:57:14.089Z.