ERA24LA289 · Cessna 172 I
Cessna 172 I · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Williamsburg Jamestown Airport (JGG) to Topsail Airpark (01NC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA289
- 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
Cessna 172 I
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N46118
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williamsburg Jamestown Airport (JGG), Williamsburg, VATo Topsail Airpark (01NC), Hampstead, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About an hour after departure, while en route to his destination, the pilot noted that the engine’s oil temperature was higher than normal and observed what appeared to be smoke coming from the engine cowling. He determined there was a possible engine fire emergency and chose to perform a landing to a cultivated field. During the landing, the left wing struck vegetation and the airplane came to rest in the field in an upright position. The airplane sustained substantial damage to its left wing and left aileron. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that a foreign material consistent with residential-type insulation obstructed the engine’s oil cooler and some cylinder cooling fins. There was no evidence of fire or fire damage noted to the engine or airframe. It is likely that the foreign material embedded in the oil cooler and some cylinder cooling fins restricted engine cooling, which resulted in an elevated oil temperature. The source of the foreign material, which was also found in the induction air filter and on the nose landing gear, could not be determined.
Probable cause
The obstruction of the engine’s cooling system by foreign object debris (residential-type insulation), which resulted in smoke, an elevated oil temperature, and a subsequent off-airport landing on unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA289
- Event ID
- 20240701194590
- Case number
- ERA24LA289
- 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: 8515f77b582940148403e005c1b5ab33e3303f7d4bebabf29b1383a993b2f987; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:59:26.070Z.