CEN24LA147 · Bellanca 7KCAB
Bellanca 7KCAB · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Brownwood Regional Airport (BWD) to Granbury Regional Airport (GDJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA147
- 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
Bellanca 7KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 7
- 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
- N8946
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brownwood Regional Airport (BWD), Brownwood, TXTo Granbury Regional Airport (GDJ), Granbury, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1973)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 reported that while enroute at 5,500 ft on a night cross-country flight, flames started coming out of the oil access door on the airplane’s cowling. The pilot executed an emergency landing and exited the airplane without further incident or injury. The fire continued to burn, and the airplane was destroyed. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine confirmed evidence of a fire in the engine compartment but its source could not be identified due to extensive thermal damage. The reason for the fire could not be determined.
Probable cause
An engine compartment fire for reasons that could not be determined due to extensive thermal damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA147
- Event ID
- 20240404194032
- Case number
- CEN24LA147
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-04-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 333af90c956808fca36f06d7cd5c4feaf3a6718ad866348a23736326ee3cc5fc; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:38:30.751Z.